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SALEM, 1904. 



TENT AND HOME 

AND OTHER SERMONS 

BY 

THE REVEREND 
JAMES FAIRBAIRN BRODIE, D.D. 



With an Introduction by 
PROFESSOR JOHN WRIGHT BUCKHAM, D.D. 

OF 

Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California 



^ iHemorial "Volume 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 






Copyright, 1912, 
By LUTHER H. GARY 



THE RUMFORD PRESS 
CONCORD • N • H • U • S • A • 



©CI.A328327 



3ame£( Jfairtiairn probie 

^tpttw^tv 24, 1854 Sugusit 16, 19X0 



Hamilton College, 1876. 

Union Theological Seminary, 1881. 

Pastor Congregational Church, Wood- 
stock, Vermont, 1882-1889. 

Pastor South Church, Salem, Massachu- 
setts, 1889-1904. 

Treasurer Fisk University, Nashville, 

Tennessee, 1904-1906. 

Acting Editor Missionary Herald, from 
April, 1908, until death. 



CONTENTS. 

I. The Earthly Tent and the Heavenly Home. 

John 2: 19, 21 and 22. II Corinthians 5:1. 1 
II. The Parable of the Eagle's Nest. 

Deuteronomy 32: 11 and 12 11 

III. The Christmas Joy. 

Luke2:10. Matthew 2: 10 26 

rV. The More Abounding Life. 

John 10: 10 34 

V. November Moods and November Ministries. 

Ezra 10: 9. Acts 28: 2 45 

VI. Made After the Power of An Endless Life. 

Hebrews 7: 16 57 

VII. Baskets Full of Fragments. 

Mark 8: 19-21 68 

VIII. The Imperishable Words of Christ. 

Matthew 24: 35 79 

IX. The Word of the Lord in the Potter's 
House. 

Jeremiah 18: 3 and 4. 89 

X. Credibility of the Resurrection. 

Acts 26: 8 102 

XL Self-Cultivation for Others' Sake. 

John 17: 19 113 

XII. Descent from the Cross. 

Matthew 27: 40 and 42 123 

XIII. Christian Strength; Its Scope and Its Secret. 

Isaiah 40: 31 135 

XIV. The Untold Resources of Faith. 

John 14:2 146 

XV. An Overworked Proverb. 

Ezekiel 18:1-4 156 

XVI. The Light and the Cloud. 

Exodus 13: 21. Mark 9: 2, 3 and 7. . . 168 
XVII. Address at Vesper Service, Cornell Uni- 

■versity 180 



FOREWORD. 

In response to requests from many sources this 
volume is issued. 

''The power of an endless life" was pre-emi- 
nently Mr. Brodie's message in his later preaching. 
For this reason the preference in choice of subjects 
has been given to sermons on immortality and kin- 
dred themes. 

To all who are living nobler lives because Mr. 
Brodie walked with them and showed them the 
Way, this book is dedicated. 

Helena Gleason Brodie. 

AUBUENDALE, MASSACHUSETTS. 

May 6, 1912. 



INTRODUCTION. 

James Faikbaikn Brodie. 

These sermons will reveal the mind and heart 
within them better than any words of another. 
And yet a brief and simple word of appreciation 
may help to wing them on their way. 

Clear-minded, true-hearted, wide-visioned, de- 
voted to the highest and best things in life, James 
Fairbairn Brodie seemed called of nature as well 
as of grace to the Gospel ministry. Many of the 
traits of his Scotch ancestry were his at their best: 
sterling character, faith in God and man, talent for 
essentials, power to get at the marrow of a subject 
or a situation. A teacher and pastor by divine 
gift and appointment, he loved his calling and 
honored it. No part of the work of the church, 
no member of it, but commanded his hearty sym- 
pathy and service. Nor was his ministry confined 
to the church. Into the charities, the philan- 
thropies, the civic life of the community he entered 
with an ardor and public spirit that knew no lim- 
itations. In the fellowship of the churches he was 
recognized not only as a leader, but as a boon and 
beloved comrade. His heartiness, his wit, always 
most kindly, his generous, out-spoken interest in 
all the churches, made him a force for friendli- 
ness and unity in that fellowship which he once 
described as "far larger and richer than any of race 
or locality, than any of mere association of man 



X INTRODUCTION. 

and man. Its foundations go down unto the very- 
depths of the divine life and the divine love." 

For fullness of life and wealth of service this life 
seemed intended. For many years he had it, 
years of mental vigor, of fruitful service, of honor 
and of joy. Then came the swift bereavement, the 
translation of the dearly loved daughter of the 
manse, days of illness and trial. It was as if the 
strong man came to see more clearly than the rest 
of us the largeness and finality of the Life 

"Where loyal hearts and true 
Stand ever in the light" 

as compared with the life here. As one drawn by 
a vision whose fascination absorbs him he moved 
patiently, steadily, bravely toward the Goal. And 
when, at the end, we looked on his calm, victo- 
rious face, we knew that he had attained. 

No truer tribute to the character and influence 
of this sterling life could be made, than that con- 
tained in the following words of a friend who worked 
close by his side, as Secretary of the Young Men's 
Christian Association of Salem: "Doctor Brodie 
kept alive one's faith in human nature. There 
were great elements of strength which were never 
used except to help. Willingness to give liberty 
and the ability to maintain it for himself, conscien- 
tiousness that made everyone safe in his confidence, 
judgment that always gave the benefit of the doubt. 
There was nothing to surpass the comradeship of 
his nature." 



INTRODUCTION, Xi 

*'For all the saints who from their labors rest, 
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, 
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia! Alleluia! 

"Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might; 
Thou, Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight; 
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true light. Alleluia!" 

John Wright Buckham. 
Berkeley, California, 
May 28, 1912. 



THE EARTHLY TENT AND THE 
HEAVENLY HOME. 

Jesus answered and said unto them: Destroy this 
temple, and in three days I will raise it again. But 
He spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore 
he was risen from the dead, the disciples remembered 
that he had said this unto them. — John 2: 19, 21, 22. 

For we know that if our earthly house of this taber- 
nacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. — 
II Cor. 5 : 1. 

A touching incident is related of Dr. Lyman 
Beecher, a giant himself in gifts of mind and 
speech, as well as father of a family of giants. 
''At the close of a long and arduous career, he 
passed under a mental cloud. The great man 
became as a little child. One day after his son, 
Henry Ward, had preached a striking sermon, 
his father entered the pulpit, and, beginning to 
speak, wandered in his words. With great tender- 
ness the preacher laid his hand upon his father's 
shoulder and said to the audience: 'My father is 
like a man who, having long dwelt in an old house, 
has made preparations for entering a new and 
larger home. Anticipating a speedy removal, he 
sent on beforehand much of his soul furniture. 



2 THE EARTHLY TENT 

When later the day of removal was postponed, 
the interval seemed so brief as to render it un- 
necessary to bring back his mental goods.' " 
''Beautiful words," says Dr. Hillis, who tells the 
story; ''describing those whose strength is de- 
clining, whose spirit is ebbing and senses failing, 
because God is packing up their soul furniture 
that they may be ready for the long journey that 
awaits us all." But the figure so aptly and touch- 
ingly applied by the great Brooklyn preacher was 
not original with him. He had learned it from 
the book which more than any other had been 
familiar to him from his childhood. He was just 
borrowing and adapting the language of Paul, 
which Paul in his turn had taken from the saying 
of Christ. To-day let this imagery, which is com- 
mon to both of our texts, serve us as a kind of 
parable for our reading anew of the great Easter 
message. 

Our Lord in the days of his flesh spoke of His 
body as a destructible temple, to be permanently 
rebuilt again, as His disciples remembered after 
He had risen from the dead. In like manner 
speaks Paul the Apostle in case of such at any 
rate as are the followers of Christ. Only he fills 
out the figure a little farther. This body of the 
flesh he pictures as a tent, pitched to be a habita- 
tion for us through our brief stay here on earth. 
Ere long we shall move out of it. Then will there 
be a house of enduring built for us to move into, 
with our own soul furniture, to inhabit eternally 



AND THE HEAVENLY HOME. 3 

as home of our own. Whether or not the apostle 
may have had it in mind, there was an event back 
in the history of Israel which his picture copies to 
the life. It was when Solomon moved the ark of 
the covenant and other furnishings of God's holy 
house from out the old, transient, perishable, 
wilderness tent, into the new temple, built of 
enduring material and grounded on the living 
bed-rock. In a way those two structures were 
very unlike each other. The contrast was wide 
between them. One was of curtains and cords 
drawn over a movable framework of light acacia 
wood; the other was of massive hewn stone, and 
beams from the forest of Lebanon. The one was 
adapted to wilderness life, to pilgrim conditions, 
could be taken down in a night, and the place 
which had known it would know it no more for- 
ever; the other belonged to a city which hath 
foundations, solid as if itself part of the very 
mount of God on which it stood. The one was a 
mere tent, held lightly with stakes and cords to the 
top of the earth ; the other was a temple, so solid and 
splendid as to rank among the seven great wonders 
of the ancient world. But in another way those 
two structures were no less remarkably alike. 
Both were after the one pattern which had been 
showed in the mount, only in the temple every 
measurement was doubled. But, chiefly, they 
were alike, aye, more they were identical in their 
contents and furniture. It was the same ark of 
God which had dwelt within curtains, that en- 



4 THE EARTHLY TENT 

tered into its enduring rest in Solomon's Holy of 
Holies. The same two tables of the law were 
there, the same glory of the Lord from between 
the cherubim shone upon it. The holy place, too, 
in the new house had for its furniture the identical 
pieces which had been in the old perishable tent. 
The golden altar of incense, the seven-branched 
lamp of gold, the table overlaid with gold for the 
shew bread were the same in both the tent and the 
house. Here were things which were neither dis- 
placed nor disused, much less destroyed, when the 
earthly tent was dissolved, and the enduring house 
was substituted. And this is the great Christian 
object lesson of the resurrection and the life of the 
world to come. It is precisely the picture given 
us by Paul of his own faith in the matter. "For 
we know that if the earthly house of our tent be 
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." In 
simple outline it is Christ's figure for what was to 
come at the close of his own earthly life. " Destroy 
this temple, and in three days I will raise it again." 
And it is of first worth for us as object teaching 
because the facts it brings out are those which most 
concern us to know. Many things as to the life 
after death it leaves still in the dark, but the 
main, vital things it makes fairly clear. 

And there is first the fact of which there is occa- 
sion enough for us all to be well aware. This body 
of flesh in which we have our life here on the earth 
is very much like a tent. It is a rather frail and 



AND THE HEAVENLY HOME. 5 

perishable structure. It is adapted to pilgrim con- 
ditions rather than to a city which hath founda- 
tions. It is subject to continual shifting and 
change. After a few years, the physiologists tell 
us it has become an entirely different body from 
what it had been before; as no doubt the curtains 
of Israel's wilderness tent were renewed many times 
from its first pitching at Sinai till it was at last 
taken down at the dedication of Solomon's temple. 
And in like manner, the time comes at last for our 
earthly tent to be disused and dissolved. It dis- 
appears, like tents when a camp is broken, and the 
place which has known it knows it no more. How 
true to the fact is the picture thus far, hardly 
needs to be pressed. 

But there is another fact connecting very 
closely with this. While the earthly tent comes 
down, perishes, dissolves, not so the life dwelling 
in it, nor yet the furniture of it. There is a field 
white with tents and all bustling with life as the 
sun goes down. Look again next morning when 
the sun is up. Not a tent or a sign of life to be 
seen. What does it mean? Has all that life 
ceased to exist? No, it simply means that an 
order came in the night, and that the army had 
marched. That old Hebrew tent in the wilderness, 
after it had stood for some time in a place, would 
suddenly be taken down, folded up, dissolved. 
What did it mean? The shining cloud which be- 
tokened God's presence dwelling within it had 
moved from it. The ark, the altar, the table, the 



6 THE EARTHLY TENT 

candlestick of gold had also been moved. Like 
this is it when man's earthly tent is dissolved. 
Death, as we call it, does not mean the end of our 
human life. It means breaking camp. It is the 
last and great moving day. And it is not to be 
tent-life any more, but living in a house. So the 
old earthly tent is left behind as being of no far- 
ther use. But the man himself with his God given 
spirit lives on. Furthermore his spiritual furniture, 
his soul's household goods go with him, as ark and 
altar, candlestick and table, went from their place 
in the tent to a corresponding place in the temple. 
Conscience, will, reason, character, these are things 
which death does not touch. They are the life 
and furnishings of man's earthly tent, which are 
still to be his life and his furnishings for the house 
eternal in the heavens into which he will move. 
Much of course will be very different. How differ- 
ent it is idle for us to be guessing. Enough to say 
that it will differ as the strength of a house from 
the frailty of a tent, as the house outmeasures the 
tent in the room it gives for fullness of life. But 
in all the vital and golden things of life it will be 
the same. The gold of personal character, of 
love of the mind and the spirit will have the same 
place in the heavenly house as in the earthly tent. 
And how the truth of this sets forever at rest cer- 
tain anxious questionings of ours. Shall we be 
able to identify our dear friends again in the life 
beyond this? How can it be else, when the things 
which are identical in both tent and house are the 



AND THE HEAVENLY HOME. 7 

personal things. Would Solomon's temple be a 
strange place for the high-priest to enter after 
having been in the old wilderness tent, year after 
year? Holy place and Holy of Holies were the 
same shape as before, only much larger. There 
was the identical ark of the covenant with its 
mercy seat and cherubim and glory of the Lord. 
Golden altar, candlestick, table were the same as 
before, familiar to him as the face of a friend. 
With all else that might be so different, here was 
enough he could recognize to make him entirely at 
home. If you were traveling to all parts of Pales- 
tine today, you would have weeks, it may be 
months, of living in a tent. In that short time 
some fellow traveler, unknown to you before, might 
become your fast and lifelong friend. Suppose 
after your return you were invited to visit him in 
his home and you found him living in a stately 
house with everything about it after the similitude 
of a palace. Would you not readily recognize your 
friend, though you had never seen him before 
except in pilgrim dress and living in a tent? If he 
were in very truth your friend, the things by 
which to identify him would be the same in the 
house that they had been in the tent. Shall we 
know our dearest friends again in the life to come? 
What is it by which we know our dearest friends 
here in this life? Is it by the dress they wear or 
the house in which they live? Is it not rather by 
the spirit they are of, by their qualities of mind 
and heart, by such soul furniture as thought and 



8 THE EARTHLY TENT 

love and character? Since these are things which 
death cannot touch, things which go over from the 
earthly tent into the heavenly house, must we not 
surely recognize our friends again? It was so that 
the closest friends of Jesus knew Him again, after 
He had risen from the dead. Much was very differ- 
ent. In many ways his form was strange to them. 
His body was no longer the earthly tent in which he 
had dwelt among them. But His mind and heart, 
His will and character were the same as before, and 
unmistakable. He talked to them of the same 
things which had been the burden of His message 
in the flesh. His ministry for them was the same 
that it had been of old. The old tone of command 
was there to mark Him as Master. The print of 
the nails was there to tell of His self-sacrificing 
love. These were the things by which the disciples 
knew it was Jesus, after the temple of His body 
was destroyed and He had raised it up again, a 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
In like manner shall be our recognizing of friends 
in the life to come. By such things as thought 
and love and character shall we know them, by 
the soul furniture with which they have moved on, 
out of the transient earthly tent, into the enduring 
heavenly house. Here is reason enough in itself 
to satisfy us that so-called spirit manifestations 
are false. The alleged spirits never come directly 
to those who have known them best on earth. 
There is always a medium and usually a total 
stranger. Then the so-called spirits are always 



AND THE HEAVENLY HOME. 9 

sadly out of character. The soul furniture is 
altogether strange and without identity. The 
spirit of a Shakespeare has lost all marks of genius 
and originality; the spirit of one's dearest friend 
lacks the very qualities which made him dear. 
Not so did Christ show Himself alive after He had 
risen. He showed Himself directly to His disci- 
ples, and His mind, His thoughts, His interest. His 
will, His love, His sympathy. His whole character, 
were identical with what they had been before. 
So when the earthly house of our tent shall be dis- 
solved, it is these things of the mind, the heart, 
the character iby which, in the heavenly house, we 
shall surely identify our loved ones and be our- 
selves identified. Is it a gifted mind we have 
known as it dwelt here in its earthly tent? We 
shall know it as the same mind there in its heavenly 
house, with room large enough for all its gifts. Is 
it a character, golden in its purity, its strength, 
its preciousness, with which we have been familiar 
here in its frail tent of flesh? There, in its enduring 
eternal house, will the gold of it be familiar as 
ever to us, with all else in perfect keeping with it. 
All that the old pilgrim tent ever serves us while 
we live in it here, the new house in the city which 
hath foundations still will serve us and immeasur- 
ably more besides. No piece of our soul furniture 
which makes life so sacred and so precious for us 
here in the earthly tent, but will have place in that 
building of God, and there will reach its fullest 
and most fitting use. 



10 THE EARTHLY TENT. 

One other truth, very vital, very weighty, this 
Easter object lesson of the tent and house cannot 
but bring very close to us. What are we making 
of our life while it is still the earthly tent in which 
we live? What sort of soul furniture are we giv- 
ing place to in our tent life? Are we living for the 
golden things of mind and heart and conscience, or 
only for such things as make the curtains of our tent? 
Is our tent furnished in its holy of holies with an ark 
of God for the keeping of His will and the manifesting 
of His glory? Has it the golden altar of a prayerful 
heart in its holy place, and the golden mind, whose 
light is the truth of God, whose bread His word? 
These are the soul furnishings which we every one 
may have while still tenting in this body of our 
flesh. And these are goods which can be packed 
at a moment's notice for moving into the new eter- 
nal house. Death has no power over such things 
as these. They are the immortal things. They 
are the things in which our human identity con- 
sists. Then for the sake of such things let us live 
our earthly life. Let a good conscience, a devout 
and . loving heart, a spiritual mind, a Christly 
character have place in our perishable tent. Then 
when the time comes for it to be disused and dis- 
solved, we shall be rich in goods to cany on into 
the eternal house, we shall have wherewith to be 
altogether and eternally at home in the city which 
hath foundations; where we shall know as also we 
are known and have part with Him who died for us 
and rose again, who is the resurrection and the life. 



THE PARABLE OF THE 
EAGLE'S NEST. 

As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flutter eth over her 
young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, 
hear eth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did 
lead him.— Bent. 33 : 11, 12. 

Singular language this for a man who had in- 
sisted that he was not eloquent, that he was slow 
of speech and of a slow tongue. God's promise 
to Moses, " I will be with thy mouth and teach 
thee what thou shalt say," had been signally kept, 
to judge from this song of his, breaking forth at 
the close of his life. Moses' slow tongue had 
become capable of the loftiest poetic utterance 
through these forty years that God was with it. 
The outcome of it was command of language such 
as this: ''Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, 
and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My 
doctrine shall drop as the rain, and my speech 
shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the 
tender herb and as the showers upon the grass." 
Even a man slow of speech and of slow tongue 
may safely summon both earth and heaven to 
listen to his words so long as God be with his 
mouth. At any rate it was human speech rising 
to sublimest heights, when Moses spoke in the 
ears of all the congregation of llrael the words 



12 THE PARABLE OF 

of this song. And in all the Song of Moses, run- 
ning throughout in so choice a strain, there is no 
point at which the music is richer, or the effect 
finer than in the sentence of our text. Both in 
motif and in phrasing it is well nigh unsurpassed. 
Let our hearts be open this morning to receive 
this scripture doctrine, dropping as the rain, dis- 
tilling as the dew in language so graphic, so co- 
piously suggestive. ''As an eagle stirreth up her 
nest, hovereth over her young, spreadeth abroad 
her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, 
so the Lord alone did lead him." 

Doubtless it was from the scenery of Mount Sinai 
that Moses borrowed this figure. That solitary 
region with its mountains of naked rock was just 
such a place as the golden eagles resort to for 
making their nests. High up on some towering 
cliff of Horeb, the mount of God, many an eagle, 
no doubt, had its eyrie and cradled its young. Up 
those rugged heights Moses himself had climbed 
to receive that law which was the charter of 
Israel as covenant people of God. There, among 
the rocky solitudes where young eagles are born, 
was the real birthplace of Israel, the holy nation. 
What so natural, then, as that the very situation 
should have furnished Moses with his figure. 
Almost literally could it be said that Israel, as 
the covenant nation, was born and cradled in an 
eagle's nest. And here, as at so many points, the 
life of God's chosen people serves as object teaching 
of truth for man's individual life. 



THE EAGLE'S NEST. 13 

What a picture of our human life is the eagle's 
nest, first of all from the very location in which it 
is found. The brow of some jagged cliff, or shelf 
in the face of some beetling precipice is the favorite 
place with the eagle for building its nest. Up at 
a height so dizzy the young eagle enters upon its 
life. Only to think of the place is enough to make 
your head fairly swim. What if the young eagle 
looks out over the edge of the nest? It sees down 
into frightful depths yawning below it! What if 
by any chance the eaglet should fall out of the 
nest? One shudders at the bare possibility of 
disaster so swift and so deadly. How like this 
birthplace of young eagles is the situation in this 
world of our human life. As we begin to look out 
upon our life and get some idea of its bearings; 
as we become aware of the conditions on which 
we have it, the mysteries surrounding it, and the 
risks involved in it, is it not much like peering 
out over the edge of an eagle's nest? It is a dizzy 
height at which we find our life set for us, when 
we begin to discover what it really means to live. 
We look out across its narrow boundaries and 
realize that there is not only a sky above us, but 
that there is an abyss underneath us. We see this 
life of ours to be not only a thing of grandest 
possibilities, but at the same time a thing of peril- 
ous liabilities. It is a sublime thing for a man to 
live. And at the same time it is an exceedingly 
risky thing. A single glance into the depths that 
break sheer down from the nest in which humanity 



14 THE PARABLE OF 

is cradled is enough to startle, almost to appall us. 
We shrink back and crouch in the little hollow of 
our immediate surroundings. What if we should 
fall out of the nest? What if life with us should 
go all to loss and waste? Who that has taken life 
at all in earnest but has experienced somewhat 
the haunting and horror of such a thought. And 
the glimpse we get while gazing into the abyss of 
lives which have gone to ruin sharpens the torture 
with which we feel the risk to ourselves. Then how 
ready we are to start the question, "Why have our 
lives been given us subject to such conditions and 
involving such risks? If God be wise, if God be 
kind, should he not have put us into the world in 
such a way as would have made it altogether a 
safe thing for every one of us to live? With all 
that there is of hazard and peril open to each one 
of us in the course of his life, with the awful lia- 
bilities to evil by which life is beset, like an eagle's 
nest on the brink of some beetling precipice, can 
God be wise at all, can God be kind at all? Is 
He a Heavenly Father, all-good, all-loving, who 
subjects His children to such exposure?" How 
commonly the goodness of God gets challenged 
after much that fashion. The various speculations 
of people upon things human and divine, how very 
largely they are that old question revamped and 
patched over so that it shall not seem quite so 
threadbare. Do not all our discontents with life, 
all our complainings about it, all our demurrers 
at it, sum up very nearly to this? If God be 



THE EAGLE'S NEST. 15 

really good, why should our life, as he appoints it 
to us, be attended with so much of hazard, be ex- 
posed to such fearful risk? Here certainly is occa- 
sion for reading the parable of the eagle's nest and 
learning its primary lesson. Why does the eagle 
resort to such a dizzy and dangerous place for 
building its nest? Because the brood it builds for 
will be eagles and not barn-yard fowls. A nest in 
the flat of the earth, out of which there is no risk 
whatever of falling, may do well enough to hatch 
goslings in. But it will never do as the place for 
young eagles to be born. The king of birds, whose 
throne is above the clouds, whose kingdom is the 
upper air, must have its very birthplace some- 
where up toward the sky. The chosen spot for 
cradling its life is the brink of a precipice, not 
because the place is hazardous, but because it is 
high. The loftiness of the situation is the essen- 
tial thing about it. Possibility of falling is simply 
incident to that. Very much in the same way is 
our life set for us in this world, with all there is of 
risk and of peril lying open beneath it. God ap- 
points it to us to live, subject to such conditions, 
exposed to such risks, because he means us to be 
men and not merely things. There are orders of 
existence all about us in the world which are beset 
by no such liability to evil. But they are the 
lower orders of existence. They are so far down 
in the scale of being that there is no such thing 
for them as danger of falling. But this human 
life of ours, God has set high up in the scale of 



16 THE PARABLE OF 

being. Well-nigh, if not quite at the summit of 
all his creation has he put us, by the very nature 
he has given us to bear. Only a little lower than 
the angels has he made us, — only ''a little lower 
than God," the Revisers have it. He has " crowned 
us with glory and honor." Not because the place 
is hazardous, but because it is high, our life is 
appointed for us in this world in the way that it 
is. The risk attending it, the depth of peril lying 
open beneath it is simply the incident of its sub- 
lime situation, of the exalted possibilities which 
open out above it. The essential thing about our 
human life is the height of it. Its risks are just 
the adjunct to that. Did God intend us to be 
mere things, subject wholly to blind material 
forces, like stones of the earth or trees of the wood; 
did God mean us to be nothing higher than the 
beasts of the field with instinct their law and 
nature their sufficiency, He could have exempted 
our life from the very conditions which involve 
for us its most serious risk. But God intends us 
to be men, with minds of our own, with wills of 
our own, with souls to call our own. So he has 
given us our life according to such spiritual con- 
ditions as give room for the exercise of mind and 
of will, as are ground for the possession of one's 
own soul. Because there is a spirit in man by 
which he is capable of rising up into fellowship 
with God himself as an eagle can soar up toward 
the sky, human life in this world is conditioned 
in the way that it is. God has created us to be 



THE EAGLE'S NEST. 17 

free in the high, tonic atmosphere of moral re- 
sponsibihty, as the eagle is free iti the wide fields of 
air. Therefore he has given us a life to live which 
is beset by temptation to evil, which has the 
depth of peril lying open beneath. But to ques- 
tion the wisdom and goodness of God because that 
is the fact, is really asking, would not God have 
been wiser, would not God have been kinder to 
have put us somewhere lower down in the scale 
of being, to have made us something poorer than 
human, something less noble than men? To com- 
plain of our life for the downward possibility it 
holds is really to complain of it as making it pos- 
sible for us to rise to loftiest heights, mounting 
up as on eagles' wings to the purity and blessed- 
ness of heaven itself. Are there any of us who 
for one cause or another have come to be more 
than usually aware of this hazardous phase of our 
life? Have we been peering out over the edge of 
the nest and having a look into the depths that 
lie open beneath? Let it not betray us into any 
small-minded discontent with our life. Let it 
rather serve to convince us more fully how great, 
how sublime, how sacred a thing it is to live. Let 
us take this to ourselves as primary lesson from 
the imagery of the text. Though the gulf be deep 
that lies open beneath the nest, after all it is of 
small account compared with the measureless ex- 
panse of the heavens that hang open from above. 
So of our human life here in this world. Though 
the depths be sheer and fearful which yawn under- 



18 THE PARABLE OF 

neath, into which it is possible for us to fall; after 
all they are of no great extent compared to the 
heights immeasurable that open out above, into 
which it is possible for us to rise, and in them 
have fullness of spiritual life. For such sublime 
possibility God brings us into the world, as the 
eagle its nestlings for the upper air. By this is 
God's wisdom, is God's goodness to be judged, 
and not by the downward possibility incident to 
it. That there is the downward possibility He 
does not let us forget, because He seeks by all 
means to guard us against it. But the mere fact 
of it is no more out of keeping with God's goodness 
and kindness to the children of men than the 
abyss beneath the nest is out of keeping with an 
eagle's fondness for her young. And what is the 
fact? Naturalists tell us that of all the birds the 
eagle has the strongest parental instinct. No 
other bird is so pains-taking and alert in the moth- 
ering of her brood. With an affection fairly fierce 
she hovers over her young, caring for their safety, 
providing for their need. So far from failing in 
fondness for her nestlings being indicated by the 
fact that they are cradled in so perilous a place, 
she is all the more solicitous for them on that very 
account. And it is so of God's sohcitude for us 
in view of the liabilities to evil which our life 
involves. It shows no lack of kindness and good- 
will in God that life is given to us on such condi- 
tions. It is quite in keeping with His love for us 
and mindfulness of us. For is it not those very 



THE EAGLWS NEST. 19 

possibilities of evil which have called forth His 
compassion and love in their fullest, tenderest 
expression? To save us from evil, to keep us from 
going down into its depths, what love to compare 
with what He has shown, what pains to be named 
beside those He has taken. "In this was mani- 
fested the love of God toward us." ''Herein is 
love, because God sent His only begotten Son to 
redeem us from evil, that through him we might 
have life." Rather than question God's goodness 
because liability to evil is involved in our life, is it 
not for us to behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, in that He spared 
not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us 
all, that with Him He might freely give us all 
things? 

And now we are ready for the further lesson 
from the eagle's nest which the text more particu- 
larly points. With Moses it was a picture of the 
way in which God dealt with Israel as a nation, 
when once it had fairly set out on its covenant 
life. Equally is it a picture for us of the way in 
which God deals with each individual life amid all 
the risk and temptation with which it is beset. 
The time comes when the eagle ceases from brood- 
ing over her nestlings, and from covering them 
with her feathers in the little hollow of the nest. 
An entire change appears in the way she deals 
with her young and the nest in which they were 
cradled. The mother-bird becomes intent upon 
getting her eaglets out of the eyrie. With wings 



20 THE PARABLE OF 

out-stretched, she offers them a place on her back 
where they may be taken and carried. As they 
keep clinging to the edge of the nest she goes 
among them and forcibly pushes them out. She 
even tears apart the sticks which herself has taken 
such pains to build together, that her young ones 
may no longer have them for support. What has 
come over the royal bird? Has she suddenly lost 
her mother-instinct? Does she care no longer for 
the brood she once cherished so fondly? Has she 
become their enemy and betaken herself to fierce- 
ness and cruelty against them? Not that at all. 
Her mother-instinct is strong as ever it was. 
Only she has made a total change in her method 
of showing it. That stirring up of the nest and 
that seeming cruelty to the nestlings, are dic- 
tates of the mother-instinct, quite as much as was 
her brooding before. They are simply the pains 
she is taking to make sure that in due time her 
eaglets shall be able to fly. Does she push one of 
them out of the nest and start it falling down 
toward the depths? Instantly she swoops with a 
still swifter drop, darts underneath, and before 
her little one can strike upon the rocks below, it 
comes to rest upon her soft feathers, between her 
untiring wings. Then, soaring upward again, bear- 
ing it upon her wings, she renews her efforts in 
teaching it to fly. 

Sir Humphrey Davy tells that he once witnessed 
above one of the crags of Ben Nevis what he calls 
the very interesting sight of "two parent eagles 



THE EAGLE'S NEST, 21 

teaching their offspring, two young birds, the 
manoeuvres of flight. They began by rising from 
the top of the mountain, in the eye of the sun. 
They at first made small circles, and the young 
birds imitated them. They paused on their wings, 
waiting till they had made their first fiight, and 
then took a second and larger gyration, always 
rising toward the sun and enlarging the circle of 
their flight, so as to make a gradually ascending 
spiral. The young ones still and slowly followed, 
apparently flying better as they mounted; and 
they continued this sublime exercise, always rising, 
till they became mere points in the air, and the 
young ones were lost, and afterward their parents 
to our aching sight." 

A similar sight, no doubt, Moses had witnessed 
more than once above the crags of Mount Sinai, 
through all the years he spent in that region. At 
any rate it supplied him a most significant image 
for God's care and pains with his people. ''As an 
eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her 
young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, 
beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did 
lead him.'' 

And how true to our human life this picture 
still continues to be. How much in the experience 
of each one of us it serves to reflect and interpret. 
So much comes upon us in the course of events 
that seems adverse and unkind. When we have 
just got ourselves fairly settled down in some 
well-feathered, comfortable nest, some untoward 



22 THE PARABLE OF 

thing comes in to stir it all up. Earthly supports 
upon which we have been resting ourselves, easy 
and content, are suddenly pulled away from be- 
neath us. What does it mean? Are such things to 
to be looked upon as the providence of God? Has 
God anything at all to do with bringing them to 
pass? Then what are we to think of God? Has 
He turned from us in anger? Has He no more 
interest in us? Has He forgotten to be gracious? 
Has His love turned to cruelty and His kindness 
to hate? Surely it is nothing of the kind. Not in 
the love of God toward us or in the goodness of 
God to us is there ever any change. There is 
change only in the way He takes of manifesting 
His love, of giving effect to His goodness. And 
can we think that God's love has less resource to 
it than the instinct of one of his creatures? The 
eagle's mother-instinct prompts her to make sure 
that those nestlings of hers are made aware of 
their wings. It is her part to help them find their 
wings, to show them of what flight they are cap- 
able to take all pains in teaching them to fly. 
Rather than that any offspring of hers should not 
attain to the flight of an eagle, she tears to pieces 
the very nest which she herself had built for its 
cradle. And shall God, whose offspring we are, 
be at any the less pains with us? Can He be con- 
tent to let us remain all our life long mere nest- 
lings, compassed within the little hollow of earthly 
supports and never finding our wings? Is He our 
heavenly Father, all loving, all wise? Then shall 



THE EAGLE'S NEST. 23 

He not be concerned to make us aware what 
capacity there is in us to mount up as on eagle's 
wings into the high atmosphere of living in fellow- 
ship with Him? Shall He not take every possible 
pains in getting us to exercise our spiritual powers 
and be at home with himself in the free air of 
heaven? Rather than that we should fail to rise 
up into that freedom and largeness of life that is 
open to us as His children, does it not belong to 
Him as our Father even to push us out from the 
nest of mere earthly comforts or pull away from 
beneath us the mere earthly supports, when we 
incline to settle down amid them and make our- 
selves wholly at ease? As the eagle stirreth up 
her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth 
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on 
her wings, so does the heavenly Father lead us, 
care for us, bring us to fullness of life. What 
kind of a life would it be for the young eagle were 
he to remain always in the nest, clinging to the 
sticks and the brush, when he has wings which 
will support him in midair, and will enable him 
to move swiftly and securely through all the wide 
heaven? And what kind of a life is it for any of 
us, to live, seeking to nestle at ease in some little 
hollow of mere earthly comforts, clinging to them 
for sole support, when we are able, if only we will, 
to mount upon wings as eagles; by trust in God, 
by the obedience of children to Him as our heavenly 
Father, to move free in the sublime fellowship of 
heaven itself. Shall we not rejoice in Him for His 



24 THE PARABLE OF 

faithfulness in teaching us this, even when it is by 
stirring up the nest and pulling it from beneath 
us as means of support. It is never His way to 
leave us at that. Swifter than the flight of an 
eagle He rideth on the heaven for our help, and 
''underneath are the everlasting arms." 

And then the eternal security of it. When 
once the young eagle has come to the use of its 
wings, the abyss beneath the nest is no longer 
any peril to it. So of our human life both for this 
world and the next. When once it mounts up 
into the purity, freedom, largeness of sonship with 
God through our Lord Jesus Christ, there is no 
longer the exposure to peril and risk. And is 
there not occasion enough for us all to be rising 
up out of our earthiness into this high atmosphere 
of spiritual living? We are so ready to attach 
ourselves to some mere earthly support, when we 
might be committing ourselves unto God and be 
free with the liberty of His children. But God in 
His love for us does not mean that we shall con- 
tinue to be of the earth, earthy. By all the dis- 
lodgments and changes and stirrings up that He 
brings into our lives, He bids us take notice that 
He does not mean it to be. What He means is that 
we shall rise to the height of a life that is akin 
with His own. To help us find our wings, to make 
us able to uplift and support ourselves upon them, 
He spares no pains even to pulling away of the 
earthly nest underneath. Let us take it not only 
as what God means with our life, but also as the 



THE EAGLE'S NEST. 25 

meaning we ourselves put into our living. So 
shall we go on to ever more and more of the eternal 
life which is in knowing the only true God and 
Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. ''As the eagle 
stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, 
spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth 
them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him." 



THE CHRISTMAS JOY.* 

Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which 
shall he to all people. — Luke 2 : 10. 

When they saw the star they rejoiced with exceeding 
great joy, — Matt. 2 : 10. 

The Christmas story, as told in the New Testa- 
ment, is not all in one account. To get anything 
like the whole of it we must read at least in both 
Matthew and Luke. And the two accounts are not 
exactly, nor even very nearly alike. Not that they 
disagree with each other, but that what one tells is 
for the most part left out of the other. A few 
things, however, are the same in them both. In 
each the place is Bethlehem of Judea, the city of 
David, and the three central figures, the Holy Child 
Jesus, Mary his mother and Joseph. One other fact 
belonging to the birth of our Lord has place with 
both Matthew and Luke. It is the joy of that first 
Christmas time. This is the message for which I 
ask your hearing, especially, to-day. The Christ- 
mas joy and its exceeding greatness. ''Good tidings 
of great joy" was the announcement from Heaven 
when Jesus was born upon earth. ''They rejoiced 
with exceeding great joy" was the experience of 

* Prepared for Christmas service 1903. The South Church 
was destroyed by fire the night before. This sermon was 
never preached. 



THE CHRISTMAS JOY. 27 

the wise men when they came to the place where 
he was. 

Here, then, we may be sure is the true keynote 
for us to take in all our keeping of Christmas. The 
birth of Christ is occasion with us for the utmost 
joy. It is an event to awaken exceeding gladness 
in every heart. Rejoicing, pure and full, is what 
it arouses. And, in one way or another, it is this 
association which has come down to us through 
the centuries of Christmas custom. Wherever it 
is observed at all, it has some aspect of a festival. 
Its coloring is bright, its tone jubilant, its atmos- 
phere cheery. Where it has run to wildness and 
excess, as in the Yule feastings of our own Saxon 
fathers, it was from mistaken attempt to make 
Christmas a time of exceeding great joy. Our 
phrase ''Merry Christmas," while colored by the 
revelry of old English custom, still serves as a 
witness of the gladness which connects with the 
coming of Christ. ''Good tidings of great joy to 
all people" is the story of the Christ child born in 
Bethlehem of Judea. "Exceeding great joy" 
there is for all, who come reverently and wisely to 
the place where he is. 

It is hardly needful to speak of the desire for 
joy which all people have. It is one of the things 
always to be taken for granted. When you meet 
people who are entire strangers to you, there is no 
occasion for you to ask them if they want to be 
happy. You are entirely sure that they do, before 
ever you have any acquaintance with them. The 



28 THE CHRISTMAS JOY. 

desire for joy is as universal as humanity itself. 
It is part of the human nature that is common to 
us all, to care for and long for happiness. Now here 
is something with which the coming of Christ to 
the world was closely concerned. This is one 
reason w'hy it is a message for all people; because 
its tidings are of great joy, and joy is what all 
people want. 

So this, for one thing, is what the birth of Jesus 
is to mean to us. It helps us to be sure that it is 
right for us both to want and to have the utmost 
of joy. Sometimes we are in doubt about that. 
We wonder if there is not something wrong in our 
desire to be happy. We get the idea that goodness 
requires us to choose the unpleasant things of life 
rather than to take pleasure in living. It is much 
in this way that many people think about the 
Christian life, about religion in general. Christ's 
call upon people to deny themselves in becoming 
his disciples they take to mean that they are to 
give up wanting to be happy and are to be willing 
to live a joyless kind of a life. Some even try to 
be Christians after that fashion. They seem afraid 
of too much enjoyment in life. But not such is 
the idea which Christ gave of religion, either in 
his teaching or by his coming to the world. His 
Sermon on the Mount he began with the word 
'^ Happy" eight times repeated; his birth in the 
Bethlehem stable was announced as "good tidings 
of great joy" to all; the very sight of him in his 
babyhood was occasion for wise men to rejoice 



TUB CHRISTMAS JOY. 29 

with exceeding great joy. The Ufe of Jesus from 
its very beginning in his manger cradle, the teach- 
ing of Jesus throughout, the calhng of Jesus to all 
people to be followers of him, are all of them to- 
gether, the Gospel. They are good news to the 
world, glad tidings of great joy to every person. 
What could do more than this to assure us that the 
longing for joy so universal and deep seated in 
the heart of humanity is proper and wholesome; 
that we are not wrong but right in wanting to be 
happy. Christ did not seek, like Stoic or Hindoo 
philospher, to pull up by the roots this human 
longing for joy in order to save men from the evils 
of life. Rather did he come for answer to it, to 
feed and fulfill it. His coming was the Heavenly 
Father's gift to his needy children on earth. It is 
he who makes known to us that God is our Father, 
and that he wants us all, calls upon us all, to be 
children of his. Is not that just another way of 
saying that God wants us all to have fullness of 
joy? Just that is what completes the showing. 
There are other indications that God means us 
to have a life that is exceeding joyful. The fact 
that he has made us capable of joy. The fact of 
so many things for us to enjoy in the world where 
he has put us to live. But we are capable of sor- 
row as well as joy, and there are painful as well as 
pleasant things in the world. So we are still in 
wonder if God does really mean and desire us to be 
happy. Then comes the message of Christ, born 
into our human life, to show us that God is our 



30 THE CHRISTMAS JOY, 

Father, and that he means us, wishes us, to live 
as children of his. Does not that settle it con- 
cerning God, that joy not sorrow is God's will 
for us? Is happiness something we long for? It 
is proper and right that we should, for it is what 
God himself desires us to have, in fullest measure. 
This, for one thing then, is the message of Christ- 
mas. It is our Father's good pleasure that we 
should both wish to be, and succeed in being, 
happy. ''Good tidings of great joy" he has sent 
to us all by the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ. His 
birth as Son of man at Bethlehem of Judea is 
occasion for us all to be rejoicing with exceeding 
great joy. 

For another thing, this Christmas message is the 
key which opens for us the secret of seeking and 
finding the utmost of joy in our lives. We our- 
selves wish to be happy. God, who is our Father 
in heaven, wishes us to be. How is the end to be 
brought about? This also is answered in the good 
tidings of great joy at the birth of Christ upon 
earth; this, a part of the exceeding great joy with 
which the wise rejoice at his cradle. It is pictured 
in the very fact that he who came bringing fullness 
of joy upon earth entered into a life of hardship 
and suffering himself. The cheerless surround- 
ings amid which he was born; the homelessness of 
the stable, the discomfort of the manger, help to 
tell us the secret by which joy for our human life 
is fulfilled through him. How is it? Not by 
having to do only with things in life which are 



THE CHRISTMAS JOY. 31 

agreeable and pleasant, and having nothing what- 
ever to do with painful and distressing things. 
That way of trying to be happy is often taken, but 
it is always much of a failure. It is the way of 
people who are mere pleasure seekers. They live 
solely for what they call ''having a good time." 
They try to deal entirely with things which will 
give them pleasant sensations and endeavor to 
put aside things which are in any way painful and 
saddening. But it is an experiment that always 
proves vain. Tried as often as it has been and is, 
living for pleasure is proverbially chasing a will-o'- 
the-wisp. The trouble with making agreeable sen- 
sations the end to live for is that they will not stay 
at the end. There is always something coming 
after them, some form or other of reaction from 
them. Pleasure seeking is a path for avoiding what 
is painful in life, which sooner or later is sure to 
bring us around to things most distressing and 
painful. 

Nor is the secret of joy, as Christ opens it to us, 
found by closing our eyes to what there is of evils 
and sorrow in the world and looking only at what 
is agreeable and good. There is a way of trying 
to be happy amid the ills and distresses of life by 
making light of them, by calling the evil good and 
banishing sorrow into some kind of forgetfulness. 
But this is not the way of Christ. Nor is it ever 
for long a successful way. For, as one has well 
said, ''Shut your eyes to evil, and when you open 
them again, you will see it is in the same place, 



32 THE CHRISTMAS JOY. 

doing the same work. Evil is not the shadow cast 
by the good, but the cloud that hides the sun and 
casts the shadow; not the silence implying sound, 
but the discord breaking the harmony." Christ's 
secret of joy, amid all that is so evil and painful in 
the world, is not any form of trying to run away from 
it, but such dealing with it as overcomes it and 
gets some service from it. It was a picture of it 
as he lay there, a babe in the Bethlehem manger. 
He came into this world, not at a place where every- 
thing was most attractive and comfortable to him, 
but at a place where, from his very cradle, he had 
hardship to bear and evil to face. He lived his 
holy life as Son of man, not by keeping the wrong 
of the world out of his sight and trying to think 
that there was nothing very wrong about it, but 
by close contact with it, by knowing how bad it is, 
what suffering it causes, and by suffering because 
of it, himself. The secret of Jesus, touching happi- 
ness for our human life, was disclosed to the full 
in his cross. For the joy set before him he endured 
that. Upon his part it was the joy of overcoming 
evil with good, of such suffering for it as would 
serve for the saving of multitudes from it. There 
is a saying of Jesus, himself, to his disciples just 
before he parted from them to go to his death, 
which tells very plainly this secret of his. "Ye shall 
be sorrowful," he said to them, "but your sorrow 
shall be turned into joy." He promised them a 
life as followers of him, not free from things to 
cause them suffering and sadness, but with power 



THE CHRISTMAS JOY. 33 

in it by which the suffering should be turned into 
comfort and the sadness into rejoicing. That is 
the true Christmas joy. That is why the coming 
of Christ into the world is tidings so glad and cheer- 
ing. There is exceeding great joy for us all to 
rejoice with over the coming of Christ, because he 
took to himself the ills and hardships and sorrows 
of our human life, and turned them into occasions 
of comfort and gladness, because he took our very 
sin upon him, so strove with it and suffered from 
it as to give us occasion for joy of forgiveness from 
it and victory over it. To-day let us all enter 
anew into this Christmas joy. Let us delight our- 
selves in God our Father, in the love wherewith he 
loves us, in that unspeakable gift by which he 
commends it to us. Let us have it for our life to 
be the children of God through Jesus Christ, and 
the very sorrows and sufferings incident to it will be 
turned into joy. 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly. — John 10 : 10. 

A many-sided mission of Jesus was the coming as 
Son of man on the earth. In his own teaching 
he has described it now in one aspect and again in 
another. As pertaining to divine law and human 
duty he said, '^I came not to destroy but to fulfill. " 
As a matter of relation between himself and his 
Father he said: ''I came not to do mine own will 
but the will of him that sent me and to finish his 
work." As it has to do with our humanity on 
the side of its need and shortcoming, he said, ''The 
Son of man is come to seek and to save that which 
was lost." His mission to our humanity, on the 
side of its best capability, is the account he has 
given in the sentence before us. ''I am come that 
they might have life, and that they might have it 
more abundantly"; to put us into full possession 
of our human life ; to make that life for us the most 
abundant possession. 

The connection of this with his picture of a good 
shepherd keeping and feeding his sheep, helps to 
make the meaning of it clear. The good shepherd 
leads his flock forth from the fold, not to some region 
where the pasturage is scanty and it is much as ever 
that a living can be picked from it, but where 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE, 35 

pasturage is so plenty that there is more than 
enough. When the feeding gets so poor that the 
sheep must nibble all day long in order to live, the 
good shepherd takes them to some other place where 
as the Psalmist has pictured it, they may lie down 
in green pastures, after they have fed to the full. 
Like this is what our Lord says he has come to 
make out of life as a possession for all who will be 
his disciples. That life for them may be not a bare 
having but an abounding. To strengthen the im- 
pression of it he brings into contrast with himself 
others whose leading of men had resulted only in 
robbing them and making life for them a poorer 
and barer thing. The Pharisees, with their 
formalism, had emptied life of all but the outer 
shell, had made a sepulchre of it, with nothing 
attractive to it but a little whitewash on the surface. 
Sadducees, with their scepticism, had sapped the 
very soul from out it and reduced it to hardly more 
than an animal existence. The Essenes exhausted 
it with useless self tortures, till there was little left 
to it of all that is richly and blessedly human. 
In sharp contrast with these and with all other ways 
in which human life is robbed of its humanity, and 
made a poor and beggarly thing, it was the ministry 
of Christ to make human life most thoroughly and 
abundantly human, to put every person into full 
possession of all the wealth of his life, to make life 
for everyone of us the richest and most enduring 
possession. "I am come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abundantly. " 



36 THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

In the most outstanding and obvious way the 
truth of these words is to be observed in the history 
that has been made since Christ came into the 
world. How vastly human life has been enriched 
since the coming of Christ and in consequence of 
it, is written so large across the face of nearly a 
score of centuries that no one with eyes can fail to 
read it. By as much as human life to-day is more 
abundant, more humane, in so many ways better 
worth living than in the age of Tiberius Caesar, 
so great is the witness from history that our Lord 
spoke the truth in this saying of his. For the 
great forces at work through all the centuries since, 
making this world of ours a better place to live in, 
making man's life a richer possession, have sprung 
indirectly at least, — most of them directly, from the 
teaching and ministry of Jesus. Nor was it long 
after he appeared on the earth that his work of 
putting men in possession of their life, of making 
the life of man a more abundant possession, began 
to show itself on a scale large enough for history 
to note. The first followers of Christ were soon 
much in evidence to that effect. In the midst of 
an age when life was so cheap that suicide had 
become fairly fashionable, almost a fad, here were 
men and women by the thousands who were taking 
a fresh lease of life, or rather, were taking such 
strong and secure hold on life, as was not a lease 
of it at all, but an ownership, from which not death 
itself was able to dispossess them. And not only 
was their hold on life so free, so firm, so lasting, but 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 37 

the wealth of it, in all that makes life worth having, 
gives it resource, substance, zest, — was equally 
great. How abundant a possession was life to such 
a man as Paul the Apostle! When once he had 
left behind him the poverty and emptiness of his 
Pharisee days, and had entered into the freedom 
and fullness of living as a follower of Christ, what 
enlargement, what enrichment, life took on for 
him. No amount of hardship could belittle it for 
him. Bonds and imprisonment could neither nar- 
row it in, nor rob it of its riches. He might suffer 
the loss of worldly things, but none the less he had 
the whole world to live for. Life to him, as an 
Apostle of Christ, was world-wide. In the matter 
of its interests, in the matter of its sympathies, 
how vastly his life exceeded what it had been before. 
As a Pharisee, life's interest all centered for him 
in one race of people. He had no sympathy for 
anything but what was strictly and narrowly 
Jewish. As a Christian, his sympathies had room 
for all races and classes of men. His interest was 
no longer limited by any such terms as Jew or 
Greek, Barbarian or Scythian, bond or free. All 
were one humanity, and everything human had 
interest for him. Very small, very empty was the 
world in which he had lived as straitest of the sect 
of the Pharisees. But the world in which he lived 
as chief of Christian apostles was a very great 
world, a world very full of all that makes human 
life an abounding and glorious thing. All this he 
had been put in possession of by the coming of 



38 THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

Christ, Son of man, his Saviour and Lord. Nor 
was he at all a solitary case in that first Christian 
age. He was simply a splendid specimen of what 
Christ was making out of life for a multitude of 
other disciples. In writing to one community of 
them Paul went so far as to assure them, '^The 
world is yours, life is yours, things present, things 
to come are yours" all ^'because ye are Christ's." 
It was a chief mark of Christianity from the first, 
that while it calls men away from a life that is 
worldly, it puts them into new and more abundant 
possession of their life as it has to do with the world. 
Our Lord's programme for his followers was not 
that they should be taken out of the world, but that 
they should overcome it, and then live on in it, as 
masters of it and not as its slaves. His calling of 
men was to service high enough, great enough to 
be mastery both of the world and of life. To be 
losing one's life for his sake was to be finding it 
again, an enlarged, an enriched, and enduring 
possession. Along with his summons, '' Come learn 
of me for I am meek and lowly of heart," is to be 
placed his beatitude, ^'For the meek shall inherit 
the earth." And just that is what thos3 first 
disciples of his proceeded forthwith to do. They 
took possession of the earth. They proved prop- 
erty for their Master and for themselves in every- 
thing of real worth that was then in the world, and 
realized for it a still greater value. Greek learning, 
Roman law as well as Hebrew ethics, they entered 
into as a part of the permanent Christian possession. 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 39 

They became heirs of all the ages, and made human 
life in all fields of it a far more abundant and glori- 
ous heritage. This effect of early Christianity, so 
"remarkable, so salutary, not on individuals 
only, or in limited communities, but on the 
scale of national life, and in countries and capitals 
most advanced in arts, industries and accumulated 
resources"; has been finely outlined in the follow- 
ing words. ''It came to communities cultured in 
letters, instructed in arts, but to a great extent 
morally rotten with luxury and lust, the prey of 
degraded and savage passions, the story of whose 
life, the picture of whose manners are almost too 
fearful to be contemplated. Christianity, in its 
worship, its humanity, its charity, in the inflex- 
ible fidelity to truth which it demanded, and in the 
heroical energy of faith toward an unseen Master 
which it inspired, struck down upon this ancient 
life, in the most cruel and dissolute capital, as a 
veritable gleam from worlds celestial; and though 
it encountered tremendous resistance of law, argu- 
ment, fierce invective, stinging satire, of the society 
which it rebuked, of the government which it 
challenged, of military opposition, and of popular 
persecutions unparalleled in the frenzied fury of 
their onset, — it overcame that resistance, awakened 
an enthusiasm which spurned and curbed the assail- 
ing hostility, converted some of its noblest cham- 
pions by its amazing serenity amid storms, and 
finally became master of the empire by its moral 
force, aided by whatever of Divine Providence we 



40 THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

may recognize in its history." If all this be true 
of Christianity in its earliest centuries, how mani- 
fold more in these that are latest! If within so 
short a space after the coming of Christ human life 
was so greatly enlarged and enriched as its direct 
result, who shall undertake to cast up the total of 
all that in one way and another His coming has done 
to make life in this most Christian age of the world 
a capacious, an abundant and glorious thing. At 
any rate we, of all people, are in best position to 
read what history has writ thus large, that Jesus, 
Son of man, spoke within sober bounds of the truth 
when he said; ''I am come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abundantly. " 
But it is not on the large scale of history, alone, 
that the truth of it appears. Equally well is it 
to be observed at closer range, even inside our 
own acquaintance with life. Within the field of 
literature, a modern man of letters has said: ''The 
most sure way to enrich life is to learn to appreciate 
trifles." It is an excellent description of the way 
in which human life is enriched by the teaching and 
ministry of Chiist, if instead of ''trifles" we say 
"the minutest details." For as Christ puts men 
into possession of their life there is nothing trifling 
about it. The smallest and commonest things 
which enter into it are of moment. The wealth 
to be realized from them, by the calling and spirit 
of Christ, goes far to make human life most abound- 
ing and rich. Something like this is true in the 
region of merely material wealth. It is either from 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 41 

small things or common things that greatest abun- 
dance of it is to be had. The richest treasure of the 
world is in things of very small bulk. The gems, 
the jewels, the gold of the earth are the merest 
particle of its solid contents. It takes only a 
Httle of such little things to make one immensely 
rich in the common, material sense. Along with 
this is another way in which human life is enriched 
on its material side ; and that is by turning common 
things to some use not known or not available 
before ; it is a chief way in which science has added 
so vastly to the wealth of the world. It has taught 
men to get service and value out of what was waste 
material before. Great industries are thriving 
and making people rich to-day, by working up what 
was counted rubbish fifty years, twenty-five, even 
ten years ago. Edison brings the force of magnet- 
ism to bear in the mining of metals, and the com- 
mon, low grade ores, which were worthless before, 
become a new source of wealth. Is it not an excel- 
lent illustration and quite up to date, of the way 
in which Christ by his coming to earth has enriched 
our human life? By giving us the gold of it, its 
very gems and jewels to possess in the little details 
which go to make up faithfulness, that crown of 
all living. By bringing to bear upon the commonest, 
ordinary, every-day things of our life such a divine 
magnetism, such attraction of spiritual force as 
will make them yield riches in wealth of character, 
in the worth of manhood, according to the stature 
of Christ. For, as Ian Maclaren has so finely said : 



42 THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

''After all, the greatest affair in life is the creation 
of character, and that can be accomplished as well 
in a cottage as in a palace. Finer webs, with more 
lasting and richer colors are wrought in poor 
Eastern huts, than in huge sounding manufac- 
tories whose black smoke trails across the sky. It 
was in a very humble home that the Perfect Man 
lived; and he has made the great success, who, by 
patience and obedience in that which is least, has 
grown into the likeness of the Son of God." And 
just that is life, as Christ came to put everyone of us 
into possession of it, to make it a most rich and 
abounding possession for everyone of us, if only we 
will have it for our own. ''Power to become the 
sons of God" is what he gives "to as many as re- 
ceive him." And what other power on earth can 
begin with that for enlarging, enriching, glorifying 
the whole life of man? Where is the detail of life so 
small but that under this power it takes upon it the 
luster of a jewel? Where is the commonplace of 
life so ordinary, but that it yields what is noble and 
worthy under this power? The " power to be sons of 
God"; — it is the power of love. As one has said: 
" The value of living is loving. " No kind of wealth 
so enriches, adorns, beautifies life for any person as 
the love that enters into it. How many an humble 
home has been made by love the richest of earthly 
habitations! How many a palace hall has been 
poverty stricken and beggarly, because love had no 
abiding place in it! It is simply impossible for 
any human being to have possession enough of 



THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 43 

anjrthing else, of money, of position, even of knowl- 
edge, to make life for him anything but empty and 
forlorn, if he is hateful and gets himself generally 
hated. At the very time when Jesus spoke these 
words of our text, there was one such man in the 
world. He held the throne of the Caesar's with all 
its fabulous wealth. Incense was burned to him 
as if he were a god, not because anybody admired 
him, but simply because he had the force to compel 
such action. None had any love for him, not even 
his nearest of kin. For years he lived practically 
alone on a beautiful island, with every luxury 
about him, except that choicest luxury of life, the 
love of friends. What poverty so deep, so abject, 
as that of Tiberius Caesar! Beside him how rich 
was Jesus of Nazareth, when he had not where to 
lay his head, even when he hung upon the cross. 
For love of true hearts for him was there, in his 
own great heart overflowing toward all mankind. 
And what love of countless miUions he thereby drew 
to himself! We speak of " the poverty of Jesus." 
Poverty! No man ever lived upon earth who was 
so rich! Human life came to its fulfillment in him, 
because there was love at the full. And that same 
abounding possession he makes out of life for all 
who will be his disciples. By taking him for 
our life, possession so rich and eternal we secure 
to ourselves. In relation to God it makes life all 
love for us, because the acquaintance which Christ 
gives us with God is as ''our Father, " and the spirit 
he gives us is that of sonship with his Father and 



44 THE MORE ABOUNDING LIFE. 

ours. In relation to fellow men, love is what Christ 
makes of life for us, for in him all men are our 
brothers. Is life a thing we hold dear? Would 
we have it a possession, ever more abounding, 
even eternal? Then let us, ourselves, belong to 
Christ. Let his love dwell richly in us and our love 
be given to him. Life is ours, the world, all things 
are ours, when we are his. '' I am come that they 
might have life and that they might have it more 
abundantly." 



NOVEMBER MOODS AND 
NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 

It was the ninth month on the twentieth day of the 
month: and all the people sat in the street of the house 
of God, trembling because of this matter and for the 
great rain. — Ezra 10 : 9. 

And the barbarous people showed us no little 
kindness: for they kindled a fire and received us 
every one, because of the present rain and because of 
the cold.— Acts 28 : 2. 

"When chill November's surly blast 
Made fields and forests bare," 

is the keynote struck by the gifted Scottish poet 
when his singing was to be in a minor strain and his 
music a dirge. A sensitive soul was that of Robert 
Burns, and sensitive especially to the changing 
moods of human life. With fine poetic instinct 
he creates for his verse a November atmosphere 
when his theme is man's inhumanity to man, and 
the mourning which it makes. It is the sombre 
aspects of life, its moods of pensiveness and pathos 
which are commonly associated with this month 
of the year, the eleventh in our calendar, but in 
the Jewish the ninth, as also in the Julian, from 
which our month's name comes, and in our own down 
to a century and a half ago. November days, 



46 NOVEMBER MOODS 

with their shortening sunUght, their leaden skies, 
their bleak winds sweeping the wreckage of sum- 
mer's wealth and beauty across bare fields, are 
apt to have a touch of sadness in them and bring 
something of depression upon our human spirits. 
Our own poet Bryant, so expert to catch and read 
the varying expressions which nature wears upon 
her face, has sketched it to the life in these few 
lines : 

" The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
Of waiHng winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and 

sere. 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie 

dead, 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. 

" Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately 
sprang and stood 
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? 
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers 
Are lying in their lowly beds with fair and good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain 
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely flowers again." 

Something of that same touch of nature, making 
all the world akin, is given at places in the scrip- 
ture. Two such places, one in the Old Testament, 
the other in the New, are before us to-day for a 
text. There is the November atmosphere to 
them both, as both belong to the month of Novem- 
ber. The earlier was at Jerusalem, in the days of 
Ezra the great Jewish organizer and reformer. 
The work of resettling the land of Israel with its 



AND NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 47 

own people after the exile was over, and of planting 
their divinely ordered institutions of worship and 
living once more upon covenant soil, had gone on 
to signal and substantial success. The House of 
God, as well as the city walls, had been rebuilded, 
if not in all the grandeur of Solomon's day, at least 
upon a goodly scale in view of the small numbers 
and the poverty to which the people were reduced. 
Once more worship of the one living God, in puri- 
fied form, was going up from the holy hill and the 
holy house which he had chosen for his name and 
his service. And along with purified worship 
had come, as a matter of course, deep searchings 
of heart, great tenderness of conscience. The new 
sense of God among the people, their intensified 
reverence for him and devoutness toward him had 
turned their thoughts upon their own ways of 
living, and given them a new sense of what was 
wrong in their customs and habits. Having for- 
saken idols for good and all and committed them- 
selves to serve the one living and all holy God, 
they were made painfully aware of certain remnants 
of heathenism still marring their manner of life. 
Alliances by marriage with idolatrous people were 
still common among them. It was a vexing prob- 
lem. Their consciences were troubled about it, 
and their hearts were sore, for it touched their 
home life with attachments and affections in many 
cases, no doubt, deep and strong. After much 
prayer and humbling of himself before God, Ezra 
the reformer gathered great numbers of them to- 



48 NOVEMBER MOODS 

gether at the lately rededicated temple in a Novem- 
ber day. There, under the dripping November 
sky, filling the street by their new house of worship, 
they sat shivering in the wet and with the inward 
uneasiness chilling and depressing their spirits. 
It was a forlorn and melancholy spectacle, the No- 
vember atmosphere without matched by the inward 
mood, by November of the spirit and soul. 

The other scene belongs to that life most event- 
ful of all in the Scriptures next to the life of Jesus 
himself. They must have been November days, 
those first passed by Paul on the island of Malta. 
It was a little after midsummer when he left 
Caesarea on the voyage to Rome, in charge of 
Julius the centurion and his imperial guard. 
Ordinarily they should have reached Italy in the 
early days of September. But head winds held 
back their little coasting vessel, as, hugging the 
shore, she beat slowly northward, and then to the 
west. Hardly half way to her home-port she 
touched at a landing from which one of the last 
wheat-ships for the year from Egypt to Italy was 
just setting sail; and her passengers for Rome were 
transferred. Still the winds were ahead and the 
sailing was slow, the greater ship being many days 
in making a distance which she would commonly 
travel in less than twenty-four hours. Much time 
went by while she lay wind-bound, in an ofiing, on 
the south shore of Crete. Already the equinox 
was passed and the Jewish fast which followed it. 
It was doubtless well into October before they had 



AND NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 49 

the fair and favoring wind which proved such a 
weather breeder. Then came the storm, with no 
ghmpse of sun or stars in many days, driving the 
ship helplessly and hopelessly before it for two 
weeks at least before it beached on an island un- 
known at the time. If it were not already Novem- 
ber when the 276 of them, crew, soldiers, prisoners 
and passengers, all got safe to land in Malta, it 
must have been very near to it. In the three 
months spent there before another ship for Italy 
would venture forth from her winter's berth, most 
of November, perhaps the whole of it would be 
included. So it is the November atmosphere again, 
and something of the November mood, described 
in these words of Paul's companion through the 
voyage, the shipwreck and the stay at Malta. 
''And the barbarous people showed us no common 
kindness; for they kindled a fire and received us 
every one, because of the present rain, and because 
of the cold." The two, together, serve well for 
picturing to us the bleaker aspects of our human 
hfe, the sinking of our human spirits, which have 
come to be associated with this season, after the 
wealth and charm of summer have vanished, and 
before winter mantles it all over with its white 
charity of the snow. In the one event we see the 
company of conscience-smitten Jews, sitting in 
the street before their sanctuary, shivering from 
heartache within and November wetness without: 
in the other event the ship's company, of many 
races, Latins, Greeks, Egyptians, as well as Jews, 

4 



50 NOVEMBER MOODS 

just ashore from the wreck and their drenching 
in the sea, huddling over the fire for warmth and 
if possible to dry their clothes, while the rain kept 
pouring down upon them, in the midst of barbarian 
people, who, for all they knew, might be more cruel 
than the ocean and the tempest. If ever a Novem- 
ber atmosphere might well bring on November 
moods, it was in situations such as these. 

But along with November moods were also No- 
vember ministries and mercies. For the conscience- 
smitten Jews, trembling at the word of their God, 
and depressed in spirit by their sense of guilt, in- 
tensified by frowning skies above them, these were 
most fittingly expressed by their leader in a sen- 
tence of his prayer: ''And now for a little moment, 
grace hath been showed from the Lord our God, 
to leave us a remnant to escape, to give us a nail 
in his holy place, that our God may enlighten our 
eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage." 
Their deepened sense of God was more than a 
quickening within them of conscience, with its 
reproachings and accusings. It was also a clearer 
perceiving of the tender mercy and abounding 
ministries of their God. There was light for them 
upon the clouds of their drear November sky. 
Their tremblings before their God were such as to 
magnify his holiness and his good-will in their eyes. 
Their repentings toward him were revealings anew 
to them of the divine purpose and power in the 
redeeming of their life. ''Our God hath not for- 
saken us, but hath extended mercy to us in the sight 



AND NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 51 

of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, and to 
give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem." 

In like manner was it with Paul and his ship- 
wrecked company, when cast upon an island whose 
people were barbarians, a horde of savage wreckers, 
it might be, living upon spoils from out the sea. 
But it turned out that they were humane and mer- 
ciful barbarians. They were barbarians given to 
hospitality, ready and abounding with ministries 
to the distressed travelers cast upon their mercies 
in the November wet and cold. Paul, especially, 
became a guest of honor with the chief man of the 
island, was bountifully provided for and sent away 
full handed, when the winter's stay was over. It 
was a clear case of November mercies and minis- 
tries coming to the relief of November moods 
in some of their most forbidding and depressing 
aspects. And in a way the case is tjrpical, as was 
also that in the earlier days of Ezra the reformer. 
November days have their place in the calendar of 
our human life, not only by way of contrast with 
the cheer and promise of May days and the rare- 
ness of a day in June, — they also bring their own 
peculiar blessings with them. They give place for 
some of life's most helpful deepening, and most 
valuable enriching. There is a certain tonic in 
the November atmosphere, along with its bleakness 
and discomforts. The moods of mind and spirit 
associated with it are not necessarily morbid. 
There is a lowliness of heart which is wholesome, 
which belongs to rest and redeeming of the soul, 



52 NOVEMBER MOODS 

according to the word of Christ. He gave to 
humility a place forever among the graces of the 
fullest human life. And so it is, not because life 
may be enjoyed more highly than is good, but be- 
cause the real and full joy of life is something with 
depth and breadth to it, as well as height. It is 
in certain of the November moods that we discover 
how deeply the foundations of our life go down, and 
how broadly they are laid, that the up-springing 
and up-building of it may reach to fullest heights. 
Many a building can not have more stories added 
to it because the foundation of it is not laid deep 
and broad enough. In like manner is it with the 
building of human character. If it is to go on and 
up, to have the higher stories and fitting finials to 
it, there must be the deep and broad foundation 
at the bottom. This is why the Christian glad 
tidings of great joy to all people have for their 
foreword, "Repent ye." A deep sense of sin, like 
that with which those Jews sat shivering before their 
sanctuary in the November chill and wet, is a 
deepening of our human life for the one foundation 
upon which it can be built up to its true and full 
proportions. The worth of it is not in itself, but 
for sake of what may rise heavenward from and 
upon it. Conscience awakened with a sense of 
sin is the soul's awakening to a sense of God's 
long suffering and tender mercy for saving from 
sin. Repentance, in its Christian meaning, is a 
God ward step. It is not only turning with sorrow 
away from one's own wrong-doing and shame; 



AND NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 53 

it is a turning of the face toward love divine and 
help divine in Jesus Christ, for deliverance there- 
from. The sorrow of it is that out of which the 
purest joys and highest worth of life are born and 
brought to all their fullness. For that November 
mood of life, the mercy is God's own tenderest 
compassion, the ministry that of a Saviour who 
himself suffered unto death that he might be the 
giver of eternal life. It is not for us to speak lightly 
of those old-time Jews, for their trembling before 
their God that bleak and chill November day. 
Something of such November might be spiritually 
seasonable in our modern religious life. Some 
such deep and heart searching sorrow over what 
there is of shame and blame upon our part, would 
no doubt be followed by a rising to loftier spiritual 
levels in Christianity of to-day. Occasionally 
there is a November with unclouded skies and 
mellow airs, and we easily fall to wishing that all 
Noverhbers might be thus serene and sunny, 
thus free from wet and chill and gloom. But we 
may be sure it will not be so. Such are exceptional 
Novembers. The character of the month does not 
permanently change. November will continue 
to be a name for what is sombre and saddening 
in aspect. So, while it seems, just now, as if the 
penitential aspects had largely disappeared from 
our rehgious experience and life, it will not always 
be so. With so much of evil as there still is in the 
world, there will come seasons again of awakened 
conscience, of deep and heart searching sorrow for 



54 NOVEMBER MOODS 

sin. And with the November mood will also come 
the November ministries of mercy. Upon the 
deeply moral foundation of thorough repentance 
will be built up new heights and excellency of Chris- 
tian living and spiritual manhood. 

And likewise there are November ministries 
and mercies, for those other November moods, 
brought on by the stress and suffering which fall 
to the lot of many good people in the world. 
That such a man as Paul should have head winds 
to sail against, should be for weeks at the tempest's 
mercy, and then be shipwrecked and cast away 
among barbarians — amid the November wet and 
cold — how sombre and depressing the aspect it 
puts upon our human life, and upon this world, in 
which we have the living of it! Was it not enough 
that plotting Jews and conniving Roman officials 
and other evil minded men, should be against him, 
hindering his good work, without the very wind 
and storm and rigors of the season conspiring with 
them? But amid all this, which was so forbidding, 
there came to Paul some of the choicest and most 
blessed of all his mercies. Was it not well worth 
his while to suffer all that stress and suspense of 
the storm at sea, in order to have meanwhile the 
revealing to him of the God, whose he was and whom 
he served, saying, ''Fear not, Paul; thou shalt stand 
before Caesar; and, lo, God hath given thee all 
them that sail with thee." How that entire 
November season brought out the splendid man- 
hood of that prince of Christian men. Nowhere 



AND NOVEMBER MINISTRIES. 55 

else was life grander and richer with him than in 
this so stern and strenuous a chapter. Nowhere 
else, with him, did the note of gratitude to God rise 
higher. In the sequel to it we read of him that he 
thanked God and took courage. It is with a finer 
and deeper fitness than we often think, that our 
Thanksgiving season is in November. It is a time 
of year when we may well be specially sensible of 
God's mercies and ministries of goodness to us, 
not simply because it comes after the full ingather- 
ing of harvest, but also because the tenderest mercy 
of our God and some of his choicest ministries, meet 
us where life seems to us stern and bare and drear, 
meet us amid our own poverty of spirit, in our 
tremblings and humblings of ourselves before our 
God, along the passages of life which are marked 
by stress and suffering. Both Burns and Bryant 
had their eyes upon this truth when they gave the 
November atmosphere to the poems from which we 
have quoted. Before he completes his Dirge, 
"That man was made to mourn," Burns himself 
assures us that the title is misleading: 

" This partial view of humankind 
Is surely not the last; 
The poor oppressed, honest man, 
Had never sure been born 
Had there not been some recompense 
To comfort those that mourn." 

And Bryant so sings the "Death of the Flowers" 
as to make it, at the close, an earnest of the im- 
mortal life: 



56 NOVEMBER MOODS. 

"And now, when comes the calm mild day as still such days will 

come, 
To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; 
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late 

he bore. 
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no 

more. 

' 'And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died. 
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side; 
In the cold mo^t earth we laid her, when the forest cast the 

leaf 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief; 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, Uke that young friend of ours 
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers." 

This is the November whose prospect is not 
''the winter of our discontent," but the eternal 
springtime in that Paradise of God, whose tree 
of life is fruit-bearing every month and its leaves 
fade not, for they have in them the ministry of 
healing for all our human ills. 



MADE AFTER THE POWER OF AN 
ENDLESS LIFE. 

Who is made, not after the law of a carnal command- 
ment, hut after the power of an endless life. — Heb. 
7 : 16. 

This statement is descriptive of Jesus our Lord 
in his life as Son of man on the earth. It is cast 
in the mould of Hebrew thinking and Hebrew 
tradition, inasmuch as the readers for whom, in 
the first instance, it was intended, were Hebrews. 
It is part of a passage setting forth the mission 
and ministry of Christ in the terms of Old Testa- 
ment priesthood. All the dignity and sanctity 
which the Jews associated with their priestly orders 
are attributed to him. And more than that, 
for the priesthood of Jesus is here pictured to those 
Hebrew people as being of a higher order than the 
highest in their hereditary system. ' Not to their 
high priest himself belonged an office and minis- 
try so exalted or so effectual as his. For what 
Jesus was in his person and character, and what 
he did in service to humanity, gave him a priest- 
hood of another order than that of Aaron and his 
sons, — a diviner and more enduring order. He 
was made, not after the law of carnal command- 
ment, but after the power of an endless life; that 



58 MADE AFTER THE 

is, made a priest, as it is written in this letter to the 
Hebrews. 

But the truth of it is by no means Hmited to the 
Hebrew point of view and habit of mind. It is 
quite as true a statement, and to us much fuller of 
suggestion and help, when taken out of the narrower 
Hebrew mould and recast after a broader pattern. 
Not in his priestly capacity alone, but through the 
whole range of his character and career as Son of 
man and Redeemer of humanity, it is a faithful 
and intensely instructive account of Jesus our 
Lord, to say, ''He is made, not after the law of a 
carnal commandment, but after the power of an 
endless life." It would not be easy to find more 
fitting terms in which to set forth the secret of all 
that Jesus was, in his person and character, as 
Son of man, — of all that he did for the blessing 
and betterment of men, than to call it the power of 
an endless life. That is what made him the man 
that he was, spiritually supreme, morally un- 
matched among all other men. That is what made 
him the helper of his brother men, mightier than 
all others on earth, able to save unto the uttermost 
all who come to God by him. 

For it is entirely in keeping with the human 
character and earthly mission of our Lord, as it is 
of any other man, to inquire as to the causes which 
made him what he was. In this respect the life 
of Jesus is open to interpretation as is any other 
human life. There are reasons sufficient why it 
was what it was. It had source and spring from 



POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 59 

which it drew its perfect quality, which gave to 
all its activities their surpassing effect. Behind 
and beneath all that goes to make the character 
of Jesus the full measure of human worth, that 
goes to make his ministry the redeeming of our 
humanity, is the cause sufficient for so great a 
result. And one of the truest, most illuminating 
names by which to call it is, ''the power of an end- 
less life." For this brings the earthly life of Jesus 
into closest touch with our common humanity, 
and helps us to realize how truly and thoroughly 
human he was. It enables us to take the facts 
of our own human experience as terms in which to 
read and understand what manner of man he was; 
and then to take to ourselves for our own living and 
character-making the very secret that was his. 
He was ''made not after the law of a carnal com- 
mandment, but after the power of an endless life." 
In a book of Prof. William James on Psychology 
there is a most significant passage, beginning with 
this notable sentence, "In all ages the man whose 
determinations are swayed by reference to the 
most distant ends has been held to possess the 
highest intelligence." This he goes on to illustrate 
by a series of examples, up in an ascending scale 
from lowest to highest through the range of so- 
called civilized humanity. At the bottom he in- 
stances the tramp — for the tramp belongs to what 
is called civilization, if not as a product, at any 
rate as a by-product. The tramp lives from hour 
to hour; his determinations are swayed by nothing 



60 MADE AFTER THE 

more distant than the next place to sponge a meal, or 
a drink, or a shelter for the night. That is a pretty 
low order, not only of intelligence, but of all that 
goes to the making of manhood. Somewhat higher 
up in the scale is the bohemian, "whose engage- 
ments are from day to day." His determinations 
are swayed by what the day may bring forth, of 
adventure, of excitement, or happy chance, with 
little reck of to-morrow, much less of far off to- 
morrows, with their harvest from seed sown to-day. 
This still is a rather low level of manhood, as well 
as intelligence. Next above the bohemian Profes- 
sor James ranks the bachelor, — "who builds but for 
a single life." His determinations are swayed by 
ends which fall wholly within the limited range of 
the few years he can count upon living. At any 
rate unless he reaches forth to ends in some way 
more distant than what lie within the short space 
of his single life, neither intelligence nor manhood 
attain their highest in him. Above him is the 
father, "who acts for another generation," whose 
determinations are swayed by reference to ends far 
forward in the lives and careers of his children 
after his own life shall have disappeared from the 
earth. The very distance away of the objects 
upon which he trains his energies and plans serves 
as a sort of measure for the height to which he 
rises in the scale of intelligence and worth as a man. 
Still higher Professor James ranks the patriot, ' Vho 
thinks of a whole community and many genera- 
tions"; and then, at the topmost level of all, the 



POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 61 

philosopher and saint/ Vhose cares are for humanity 
and. for eternity." It is only when a person's 
determinations are swayed with reference to ends 
that are boundless in extent, that are without 
limit in the distance to which they reach away 
from the passing moment and the present act, 
that he attains the summit of human intelligence, 
and measures up to the full stature of a man. 
Such, at any rate, is the verdict of an expert in 
modern psychology. And he cites it, too, as being 
the verdict of human experience through all the 
ages. How entirely it agrees with this description 
of Jesus, Son of man, in the New Testament. He 
is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, 
but after the power of an endless life. Here is a 
man, among the sons of men, whose determina- 
tions were swayed always by reference to most 
distant ends: ends, such as the doing of God's 
will on earth as it is done in heaven; ends, such as 
the redeeming of all humanity from unrighteousness 
to be the children of God; ends, far off as the king- 
doms of this earth become, at last, the kingdom of 
God. And at the same time here is a man, who, 
for moral grandeur, for worth and wealth of manly 
character, has no equal among the sons of men. 
If the psychologist is right in his understanding of 
human attainment; if what he cites as the verdict 
of all the ages be correct, then the man Christ 
Jesus is the crown of our humanity, not only in 
moral excellence but, also, in height of intelligence. 
He was made ''after the power of an endless life.'* 



62 MADE AFTER THE 

That was what transfigured the hfe of Jesus, out 
of the abject into the subHme. Living within the 
narrowest of earthly Hmits, with the least possible 
of earthly estate or earthly circumstance, he so 
lived as to glorify all that belongs to our common 
humanity; so lived as to give the world the one 
perfect example of what true manhood is; so lived 
as to be the mightiest of all forces making for man- 
hood in other men. How did he do it? What 
better answer than to say, ''After the potver of 
an endless life." While the limits were so narrow 
within which he lived his life upon earth, the ends 
with reference to which all his determinations were 
swayed lay far beyond any and all earthly con- 
fines. They were high as heaven is above the earth, 
far-reaching as eternity beyond the boundaries of 
time. God, his will, his kingdom, the world to come, 
and in it the life everlasting, these were what 
entered as factors into his lowly living as Son of 
man; these the far-away ends toward which he was 
always shaping his steps, by which he himself was 
shaped in his own perfect manhood and in the help 
that was laid upon him for other men. Without 
this, what could a life amid his humble surround- 
ings ever have amounted to, either for quality of 
character or for moral influence upon the world? 
Other carpenters there were in Galilee who worked 
with the same sort of tools and material as he, 
whose homely workmanship was perhaps but little 
inferior to his. Other villagers there were in 
Nazareth whose lot and whose toil was of the like 



POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 63 

sort with his. But none of them produced there 
any such quahty and worth of character as he did, 
none of them stored up there, as he did, a moral 
energy by which the whole world was to be moved 
to righteousness and a higher order of humanity. 
The difference was that Jesus lived and worked 
within the narrow limits, did the common duties 
lying nearest him, with mind all alive to another 
and far greater world, with heart and will intent 
on ends heaven high, far-reaching as eternity itself. 
His determinations, within the narrow round of 
Nazareth village life, as well as afterward, when 
teaching multitudes on hill side or by lake shore, 
were shaped with a view to ends lying in the eternal 
will of God, belonging to a kingdom not of this 
world but of the world to come. He was made 
"after the power of an endless life." But for this 
power, what was there to the human life of Jesus 
to make it more memorable or mightier in moral 
force than that of any other plain man, situated and 
circumstanced as he? What he was in his own 
character as Son of man, the mighty movement he 
originated of moral uplift to the world, still widen- 
ing in scope and gaining in momentum, witness 
together to the force in him outmeasuring both 
time and the earth. No store of human inheritance, 
nor force of human circumstance ever sufficed to 
produce such results. All the powers of this world 
together are not able to bring forth such blossom- 
ing and fruit as appear in the personal character 
of Jesus and his regenerating of our human life. 



64 MADE AFTER THE 

Only powers of the world to come are equal to that 
achievement. Jesus our Lord was the bright con- 
summate flower of all moral beauty and excellence, 
because the springs of his life lay, not within nar- 
row limits of time and earth, but beyond and above, 
in the eternities of God himself. His ministry was 
the redeeming of our humanity, because he dealt 
with human life as having to do, not with this 
present world alone, but with a world to come, a 
world whose values are measureless as the eternal 
years. After the power of an endless life was he 
made priest. After the power of an endless life 
was he made in all that is the measure of his stature 
as the perfect man, in all that qualifies him to be 
the Saviour of all men, who trust in and pattern 
after him. 

But there is more to this truth than just the 
manifestation of it in the life and ministry of Christ. 
It has bearing, also, upon our lives as he calls us 
to be followers of him. It is ''after the power of 
an endless life" as well that we are made his dis- 
ciples. It is power in which he makes us partakers 
with himself as we take him for our Saviour and 
Master. And the effect of it upon us is like to 
what it was so manifestly and unmistakably with 
him. No sooner do we begin to be swayed in the 
determinations of our life by ends high as God, 
far distant as eternity, than it tells upon us in a 
higher quality of character and an increase of our 
moral force on other people. Not more surely 
is it a mark of higher human intelligence when men 



POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 65 

are swayed in their determinations with reference 
to far distant ends, than it is a mark of saintliness 
in human character and strength of moral influence 
when men live their lives with a view to ends that 
are divine and a world that is eternal. Explain 
the fact as you may, it stands there, a fact not to be 
gainsaid, abundantly witnessed in human experi- 
ence through all the ages. The man who sincerely 
and earnestly shapes his life with a view to eternity 
with God, the High and Lofty one whose name is 
Holy inhabiting it, and in which he is to live forever 
when his life on earth is ended, cannot fail to be a 
finer and nobler type of man, will surely wield a 
greater influence for good on other people, as the 
result of it. There is a height and fineness of 
quality which human character takes upon itself, 
there is an intensity of moral energy which it puts 
forth, when it is shaped with a view to ends lying 
in the eternal world. This is ''the power of an 
endless life" for the making of manhood here, in 
this present world. 

But what if there be no world to come, after 
life's fitful fever has burned itself out? What if 
all our hope of living on, through an eternal future, 
be such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little 
life is rounded with a sleep? Even then it is still 
the fact, that men are better men, live nobler, 
finer human lives here, in this world, as the result 
of reckoning upon the world to come. It is still 
the fact that the intensest moral energy and the 
mightiest influence for helping humanity onward 



66 MADE AFTER THE 

and upward have proceeded from lives inspired 
and dominated by devoutest expectation of living 
on through the eternal years. What better witness 
could there be that such devoutest expectations are 
not misplaced? When some plant or tree grows 
best in a certain soil and climate, when there 
it reaches its most abundant blossoming and its 
richest fruitage, there is no hesitation in concluding 
that there is where the plant or tree belongs. So 
when our humanity develops its finest, blossoms 
most beautifully and yields its choicest fruit, in the 
soil of sonship with the eternal God, in the climate 
of highest hope for the eternal life, shall there be 
hesitation in concluding that such is the very soil 
and climate in which this plant belongs? So it is 
that Jesus, Son of man, interprets to us our human 
life. So it is that he redeems and commands it 
for us. He deals with it as having eternity set 
at the heart of it, as requiring eternity to give scope 
and stimulus and nutriment sufficient to bring it 
to anything like its best. As he himself was made 
a priest, was for us made a prince and Saviour 
''after the power of an endless life," so is his making 
of us as his disciples after the same power and proc- 
ess. It means that we, like him, in order to realize 
our fullest humanity, in order to take on our finest 
character and be of the greatest good, must be 
swayed in our determinations by reference to ends 
which lie in the eternal years of God and of the 
life to come. Much stress is laid, in our time, on 
doing the duty that lies nearest one, meeting each 



POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 67 

day as it comes, with its demands and opportunities. 
And it is not easy to over urge the importance of 
so doing. But, as matter of fact, the duty lying 
nearest is never done the best it can be without 
regard for far distant ends, toward which it is a 
step. To-day's demands and opportunities are 
never squarely and fully met without some vision 
of to-morrow's opening out in long vista from them. 
^'Man is made so," said Phillips Brooks, ''that 
this sense is necessary to the most vigorous and 
best life always. Let me feel that nothing but this 
moment depends on this moment's action, and I am 
very apt to let this moment act as it will. Let me 
see the spirits of the moments yet unborn standing 
and watching it anxiously, and I must watch it also 
for their sakes." If, then, we are but aware that 
the eternal years wait for us, filled with an infinite 
Father's thought and love toward us, must it not 
make us watchful of every step by which we move 
on toward it? Must it not enable us to do our very 
best with the duty lying nearest? Is there not 
in it the very power that can make the most and 
best of us, even as the Son of man himself was made 
all that he came on earth to be and do, ''after the 
power of an endless life." 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, 
how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They 
say unto him, twelve. And when the seven among the 
four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments 
took ye upf And they say, seven. And he said 
unto them, How is it that ye do not understand? — 
Mark 8 : 19-21. 

It is one of the few points at which our Lord 
seems almost to have lost patience with the twelve 
disciples. They were so slow to learn, their mem- 
ories were so short ! At least they failed to remem- 
ber the one most memorable thing in what they 
had witnessed of the ministry their Lord had been 
doing. They could recall the exact number of 
baskets filled for them each time they had attended 
and assisted their Master, when he multiplied bread 
for feeding the hungry. But what was most vital 
of all about it had soon slipped their minds, if 
indeed they had laid hold upon it with anything 
like a right understanding. The real meaning for 
them of living, day after day, in the presence and 
with the ministry of one who could do such mighty 
works, was what they were missing. This is the 
lesson which they were so slow to learn. When 
some new situation arose with its questions and 
problems, they failed to carry over with them for 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 69 

light upon it, what they had witnessed of Jesus 
living and working among them. They did not 
seem to be aware that in companying with one who 
had so easily showed himself master of the situation, 
with thousands of hungry people about him, in a 
desert place, they carried with them the master key 
for every new situation of life into which they 
should enter. That they did not understand this, 
how they could possibly help understanding it, 
was strange to him who had been doing so much to 
impress it upon them. This was what put his 
patience with them under so severe a strain. And 
may not these questions of Jesus about it serve 
well to bring home to us, with double force, the 
very truth which the twelve seemed so strangely, 
almost hopelessly, slow to apprehend. '^He saith 
unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no 
bread? perceive ye not yet, neither understand? 
have ye your heart yet hardened? and do ye not 
remember? When I brake the five loaves among 
five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments 
took ye up? They say unto him, twelve. And 
when the seven among four thousand, how many 
baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they 
said, seven. And he said unto them. How is it 
that ye do not understand?" 

It is Christ's message to us, touching our remem- 
brance of what the past has enabled us to witness 
of divine help and blessing, in our lives. That 
there are such chapters to recall in every one of 
our lives may safely be taken for granted. Some- 



70 BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

where behind us has there not been the desert place 
of life, with its extremity of need and distress, into 
which the divine help has come, as it were a hand 
outstretched, multiplying bread for our hunger? 
With most of us has not such miracle of the loaves 
been witnessed again and again? Is there not 
more than one such timely ministry which we have 
occasion to remember? If in one desert place there 
have been twelve baskets full for us to take up 
from the divine mercy exercised toward us, have 
there not also at some other place been seven? 
Cast your eye back along the pathway of life over 
which you have come. If at every turn of it, where 
there was occasion for you to say, ''Hitherto hath 
the Lord helped me," you have, like Samuel, set up 
a stone to mark it, are there not some of them still 
plainly in sight? It is a message from these for 
our present life which Christ brings us in the 
words of our text. What is our remembrance 
of the divine help as we have witnessed it in the 
time past of our life? What is to be our understand- 
ing about it? Clearly there are two ways in which 
we may remember it. Clearly there is a fullness 
of meaning to it which we are liable to miss. 
There was a way in which the disciples remem- 
bered, with not a little exactness, what they had 
witnessed of divine help at the hand of Jesus their 
Lord those two times in the desert. The precise 
number of loaves, of the thousands fed, of the bas- 
kets full of fragments which they themselves took 
up, in each case they could distinctly recall. 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 71 

Each scene, no doubt, remained sharply and sepa- 
rately outlined in their minds. For that matter, 
just there was the fault in their remembrance. 
Each occasion of the divine help they had wit- 
nessed they kept as a memory by itself. What 
they forgot, or overlooked, was the great constant 
fact of the divine helpfulness in Christ Jesus their 
Lord, connecting between these two marked in- 
stances of it, following after, as it had also pre- 
ceded them. Their remembrance was rather of help 
from the Lord here and there than of the Lord as 
the helper whom they had continually with them. 
It was somewhat as if the traveler should remember 
only those points in his journey where he stopped 
for his meals, without thought of the highway, with 
its levels and grades, which had been a continuous 
help to his journey. Or, it was as if one were to 
remember only the broad, smooth millponds on 
some mighty river, and forget the continuous 
flow of the stream which connects them, which 
was before any one of them, and follows on after it 
again. To recall some instance in the past of the 
divine help toward us, as if it were a thing by 
itself, as if it were a sort of pool in the desert, with- 
out inlet or outlet, is one way of doing. But to 
remember it as some broad Ontario into which, 
from above, a mighty Niagara is pouring its flood, 
and from which follows on a great river St. Law^- 
rence, flowing to the sea, is quite another thing. 
This was the way in which Jesus wanted his dis- 
ciples to keep in mind his own mighty works of help, 



72 BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

for them and for others. That they were so slow 
to do it was no small disappointment to him. How 
could they witness such instances of his help 
without learning of him as their continual Helper? 
How was it they did not understand that the 
presence with them of Him whose help, again and 
again had proved so divine and so timely, was a 
continuous stream of divine helpfulness, going on 
with them into each new situation of their life? 
After what they had thus repeatedly witnessed of 
help from their Master, even in desert places, could 
they not be confident of a helper always at hand, 
so long as they companied with him? It seems 
to us that they very easily might. 

Then why is it that we are so apt to recall the 
occasions of God's helping us in the past after this 
same strange and short-sighted way? As memory 
calls up to us some desert place in our life, where 
we were almost ready to faint with the distress and 
the weariness of it, and relief came, as by the divine 
hand extended to us, how apt we are to keep it in 
remembrance as a thing by itself. And when a 
second time, or a third, the like experience comes to 
us, with more or less difi'erence of detail, again it is 
likely to have a place in our memory apart by 
itself. But how far short this comes from being 
the full remembrance of our help from God in the 
past. It is remembering simply the fragments 
of God's mercy to us, while forgetting it in its 
wholeness. It is giving heed to the things here 
and there which the stream has cast up on its 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 73 

banks and taking no notice of the stream itself, in 
unceasing, unfailing flow. And so when some new 
situation arises, in which the divine help is espe- 
cially needed, it is regret and repining which come 
from this kind of remembrance, rather than hope 
and good cheer. It was so with the people of 
Israel, when they said: ^'Can God furnish a table 
in the wilderness? Behold he smote the rock, that 
the water gushed out, and the streams overflowed; 
can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for 
his people?" They remembered the help which 
God had given them in the past, but in such a way 
as to be unmindful of God as the ever-present 
helper, when the new crisis of need was upon them. 
God's mercy toward them was a memory in the 
past, and not a fact in the present. They looked 
back to it with a sigh of regret rather than with a 
sense of relief. They were neither the braver nor 
the abler for meeting the new problems of their 
life, from recalling how God's hand had formerly 
figured in solving their problems. They looked 
back upon their past deliverances without seeing 
in them any earnest of deliverance to be. Hitherto 
the Lord had helped them, but they remembered 
it so much as a thing by itself that it did not make 
their present case seem any the less helpless. And 
how apt we all are to recall God's help of us in the 
past after that same short-sighted way. How 
often, in the face of new needs, new difficulties, new 
distresses, we look back with regret to times in 
the past when by God's help we were delivered 



74 BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

out of great need, difficulty, distress. If only we 
could be back there, where the rock was smitten 
for us in the desert, or the five loaves were broken 
among the five thousand; but in this new desert 
place to which we have come, what help is there for 
us? Then, there were baskets full of fragments for 
us to take up from the divine mercy and ministry 
to us. Now, we have no bread with us at all. 
What does it mean? Simply that in recalling 
past mercies and deliverances of God m any such 
way we do not really remember. It is only the 
fragments of which we are mindful. The divine 
helpfulness for us as a great continuous fact of 
our life we are not keeping in mind. We do not 
yet understand what past mercies and deliverances 
mean in relation to present problems and needs. 
The rock smitten in the wilderness, the five loaves 
broken among five thousand in the desert place, are 
memorable not each by itself. Each was witness 
to a divine helper, ever present and all-sufficient for 
every new time that should come. That rock in 
the wilderness, says the Christian Apostle, was spir- 
itual in its ministry to Israel, and as such it did not 
remain at a particular point of their journey, but 
followed them, for their drinking of it anew at every 
new stage of their march. And so when Jesus, 
in the desert place, broke the loaves among the 
thousands, and baskets full of the fragments were 
taken up, it was the manifesting of himself to men 
as the Bread of Life, as Divine Helper, Deliverer, 
Saviour, always at hand, with abounding supply 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 75 

for every new human need, with the fullest solu- 
tion of every new problem of life. What were 
twelve baskets full of broken bread to remember 
alongside the continuous, abounding divine help- 
fulness of him who had broken the loaves among the 
thousands! They were memorable only as serving 
to keep that in continual remembrance. And so 
it is of those times past in our lives, when in some 
signal way help, deliverance, blessing came to us 
from our God. They are memorable, not so much 
for the pleasure of looking back upon them as for 
the joy of understanding that the same Divine 
Helper who gave us the deliverance and the blessing 
then attends us in each new situation, is equally 
at hand to deliver and to bless us in our present 
difficulty, in our newest need. That rock smitten 
for us back there in the desert is for us to remember, 
rather as the spiritual Rock which follows us than 
as a merely monumental spot. Those baskets full 
of fragments, which once or twice we took up from 
the divine ministry in the desert place, are to be 
cherished in our memories for what they tell us of 
the divine hand which broke them, ready and 
mighty with help and blessing for us in our present 
case. It is so that Paul remembered the help he 
had obtained of God in the times past of his life. 
Once in Asia, he tells us, such trouble came to him 
that he was pressed out of measure, above strength, 
insomuch that he despaired even of life. But God 
delivered him from so great a death. And when 
he writes of it he looks upon it not as something 



76 BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

belonging solely to the past. It is pledge to him in 
the present, and conjfidence for the time to come. 
''God who hath delivered us from so great a death 
and doth deliver; in whom we trust that he will 
yet deliver us" is the way he remembered it. And 
it is such remembrance of his mighty and merciful 
working among them that Christ seeks from all his 
disciples. It is so that he would have us under- 
stand all of the deliverance, the help and the blessing 
witnessed in the past of our lives. Is there a time 
to which you can look back and say, the Lord saved 
me there from my sin with a great salvation? What 
then? Do you not understand that the same Lord 
is at hand to save you to the uttermost from the sin 
which is besetting you to-day? Can you recall 
any time when, by God's help, you withstood and 
overcame great temptation? Then remember that 
the like victory is open to you over whatever temp- 
tation may be assailing you now. Does the past 
hold for us chapters of trial, sorrow, suffering 
through which we were led by the hand ''divinely 
gentle and divinely strong"? Shall it not then 
be the understanding with us in each new chapter 
of trial, sorrow, suffering which may come that the 
same divinely strong and gentle hand is outstretch- 
ing to us? With David the remembrance that the 
Lord had delivered him out of the paw of the lion 
and out of the paw of the bear, was both courage 
and strength for facing his giant foe. So is it well 
for us all to take both strength and courage with us 
into each new struggle of our life, being mindful 



BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 77 

of the times when God has helped us hitherto. 
Are we faint of heart, it must be because we do not 
well remember, because we do not understand. 
To adapt, somewhat, the words of another, ''If we 
stand in front of the new temptation or the new pain 
and tremble, just as if we had never seen a tempta- 
tion or a pain before, what does it mean? It must 
mean that out of the old mercy we have not gath- 
ered God. We may have come out of it with thank- 
fulness for release; but we have not brought out 
of it a deep and abiding fellowship with Christ, a 
firm and immovable confidence that we are his 
and he is ours, to take with us into the new need 
which we have reached." ''To gather God" from 
his past helping of us is a fine way of putting it. It 
is so that we can make sure of him as our ever- 
present Helper as new occasions come. This is 
the remembrance, this the understanding for which 
our Lord appealed. 

And it is an appeal to the church, as well as to 
individual disciples. This is so well said in another's 
words that I make free to use them. "The Chris- 
tian church lives through one period in her career ; 
she conquers the enemies that meet her there; she 
keeps herself alive and feeds h^r children. Then 
she passes on into another period with its new 
needs, its calls for other methods and miracles, and 
always there is a spirit in the church which trembles 
and has not learned, from the way in which God 
has cared for his church in the past, that he, the 
same God, is able to take care of her in the future 



78 BASKETS FULL OF FRAGMENTS. 

also. He answered the sceptics of the old centuries, 
but can he answer the subtler, finer sceptics of to- 
day? He overcame the worldliness of the eight- 
eenth century, but can he conquer the materialism 
of the nineteenth? He saved his church when she 
was persecuted with rack and fire, can he save her 
also when she is tempted with the corruptions of 
prosperity and fashion? These are the questions 
one hears," this writer says. What answer to 
them so complete as this word of Jesus to the twelve : 
''When I broke the loaves among the thousands, 
how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? 
How is it that ye do not understand?" Dehver- 
ances of his church in the past are so many pledges 
that through all time Christ lives in the church as 
his body upon earth. It is so, thus far that he has 
kept his word : ''Lo I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world." And shall not this be our 
remembrance and understanding of it for church 
needs and problems of the present day? Baskets 
full of fragments have been gathered in the past, 
because our Lord himself was there to break the 
bread. And still is he the Bread of life, unfailing 
to-day as in any former time. He is the smitten 
Rock which follows on for the refreshing of age after 
age, which follows us to make each new chapter of 
our life fresh with his ministries of saving, of bless- 
ing, of fulfilling unto us our life. 



THE IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF 
CHRIST. 

Heaven and earth shall pass away: hut my words 
shall not pass away. — Matt. 24 : 35. 

A bold statement for anyone to make; fairly 
extravagant it must have sounded, when first it was 
spoken. To prophesy is always venturesome. 
Never more so than in undertaking to tell before- 
hand with any certainty what words are to be 
enduring. Select, from the literature of any age, 
writings that are sure to be immortal! In nothing 
have the best of critics gone wider of the mark than 
in their attempt to do that. Books at whose ap- 
pearing it has been confidently said, they belong 
among the classics, they will surely live, in a sur- 
prisingly short space of time have had their day 
and been shelved forever. While others for which 
no one at first would venture to predict a future, 
have persisted from age to age and proved them- 
selves imperishable. The people of Shakespeare's 
day seem to have had little idea that what he was 
writing for the London stage would live on and sur- 
pass all else in English letters. And how many a 
writer, whose admirers at the flood tide of his pop- 
ularity have predicted for him a place beside 
Shakespeare among the immortals, has gone down 
into utter forgetfulness. Rash man, among all the 



80 IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 

multitude whose ^'making of books is without end/' 
who should say: My words shall never pass away! 
But the man who said these words, as recorded in 
our text, was one who never put pen to paper, who 
committed no word of his to writing of any kind, so 
far as can be known. The only writing of his, so 
much as mentioned, was with his finger on the 
ground. But the words he wrote, are not preserved, 
if in fact he did write at all, for the account of it 
is not found at all in the oldest copies of the Gospel 
by John. So, practically, we are without infor- 
mation of any word that our Lord ever put into 
writing. And yet it is he who had the boldness to 
say, ''Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my 
words shall not pass away." How very unlikely 
a saying! Had it been some old time king of 
Egypt, when his huge obelisk of granite was quar- 
ried out, chiseled all over with picture writing, 
and set up in a rainless climate who had said ''My 
words shall not pass away," it might have seemed 
not impossible. Even then the time might come, 
as it did, when no one any longer knew what his 
picture words meant, when for century after cen- 
tury they had passed away into mere hieroglyphics, 
another name for unreadable cipher. Had it been 
some Grecian sage or Roman lawgiver, who said, 
"My words shall never pass away," when he saw 
them chiseled in marble or tableted in brass, it 
would not have seemed so strange. But he who 
said it was an unlettered Galilean, going about from 
place to place, speaking now to crowds of people in 



IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 81 

village synagogue, or the open air, and again to indi- 
viduals or to little groups in private places; with- 
out taking any pains, without seeming to have a 
care that what he was saying should be preserved. 
Among the twelve who attended him as he taught 
and preached, there was no shorthand reporter to 
take down his words, that he might review them 
afterwards and see that he had said exactly what 
he meant. No discourse of his did he ever write 
out, either before or after it was given, that some 
person not able to hear it might have it to read 
over. Neither abstract nor extract of his own say- 
ings did he ever put in writing, that they might be 
filed away and kept for future reference. All of 
that, Jesus, the Great Teacher, left for others than 
himself to do. He gave his Gospel to the world 
wholly in the spoken word, and in actions whose 
speaking is louder than words. He scattered his 
message broadcast. He committed it to the winds, 
as it were. He trusted it to make its own record, 
to write itself out in such form as would outlast 
any alphabet, be more enduring than parchment, 
than slabs of stone and plates of brass. Was it 
not a strange way to do? Stranger still is the 
fact that the very thing he foretold is precisely 
what came to pass. His words, spoken those cen- 
turies ago, in synagogue, on hillside and house- 
top; flung out to the ears of people too dull to 
understand much of them, people too gross to 
have any great sympathy with them, have not 
passed away, but are enduring still, as true to- 



82 IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 

day, as full of meaning and of power to-day, as 
when they first fell from his lips, by the blue Lake 
of Galilee, in crowded temple porch or along the 
shaded garden walks of Olivet. And what else 
remains of all the world as it was when Jesus lived 
and taught? The earth of that time has certainly 
passed away. Its governments, its languages, 
its very geography is gone. The two things in all 
that earth which seemed sure to last were Roman 
power and Grecian culture. But among great 
earth powers to-day how feeble, how second-rate 
the Italian kingdom with its capital on the same 
spot where Caesar's stood. Then it was the Roman 
going everywhere to give the law and take the trib- 
ute. To-day it is the Italian going everjrwhere to do 
the digging and the hand-organ grinding. Then 
it was the schoolmasters of every land who came 
from Greece. Now it is menfrom Greece who push 
fruit carts through the streets and cry bananas! 
Sure enough, the earth has passed away since Jesus 
sat upon the mount of Olives and told his disciples 
of things to come. And not the earth only, but 
heaven as well has passed away. The astronomy 
of that time has gone along with its geography. 
The sky overhead, — everyone looked upon it then 
as a sort of revolving roof above the earth. Sun, 
moon and stars were made account of, as so many 
splendid conveniences for this world in which man 
has his life. There was little thought of any other 
use for the heavenly bodies, except to make their 
round of attendance upon the earth and its life. 



IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 83 

The whole heaven was reckoned upon as centering 
here. But that heaven has long ago passed away. 
It is quite a different heaven for us as we look up at 
the sky. Heavenly bodies are worlds themselves, 
not mere adjuncts to ours. We look up to the heav- 
ens, not as if against a vast over-arching canopy, 
but just into endless depths of space, with number- 
less other and far greater worlds. The service 
which sun and stars give to our little earth is but an 
incident to other ends they fulfill. 

Then there is another sense in which the heaven 
of nineteen centuries ago has passed away. To all 
peoples then, except a very small remnant of Jews, 
heaven was the home of gods many, of divin- 
ities diverse as nature itself. With the Greek and 
Roman it was Ol5rmpus, with its gods and god- 
desses, loving, hating, intriguing, quarreling, like 
lords and beauties in some monarch's court. With 
our own Norse ancestors, heaven was Valhalla, 
with its brawny deities and their boisterous feast- 
ings. With the red men, whose home this land of 
ours was, heaven was the happy hunting ground. 
All those heavens have passed away. Others 
like them still remain among the peoples of far 
eastern and southern lands. But there too they 
are beginning to pass away. Our own century 
has witnessed the passing of that kind of heaven 
from multitudes in Japan, China, India, and even 
in Darkest Africa; and there are Islands of the 
Pacific, by the hundreds, from which it has passed 
away within the memory of many living. And 



84 IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 

in every instance, the occasion of its passing, the 
agency, the very cause of it has been what? The 
words of Jesus, Son of man, spoken so long ago, 
within such brief space both of time and territory, 
flung out upon dull ears and slow hearts of men, 
without pains by the speaker himself to gather them 
up and put them into writing. Out through the 
Roman empire went those words of Jesus, in the 
graceful widely spoken Greek, the stately Latin, 
and many other ruder tongues. And it was not 
long before Olympus with its gods and goddesses 
was passing from the thoughts of men, as the stars 
fade when the sunrise comes, and its place was 
taken by the new heaven of ''My Father's house" 
with many mansions. On went those words of the 
Galilean, westward, northward, among the Gauls, 
the Britons, the Teuton tribes, and ere long, every- 
where, it was the twilight of the gods. The night 
stars disappeared with the shining of the sun. The 
heaven of Valhalla passed away for ''the house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Across 
the seas, those words of Jesus journeyed with dis- 
coverer and pilgrim, and now vover well-nigh all 
this great continent of ours, the heaven of happy 
hunting grounds has passed away; and there is the 
new heaven, with great white throne, and sea of 
glass and white robes which are the righteousness 
of saints. How came it to be so? 

A single word of Christ's carries in itself the secret 
of so great a change. It is the word Father. By 
giving the world that name, in which to gather up 



IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 85 

and unify all its thoughts of the divine, Jesus of 
Nazareth set the power at work for rolling up as a 
scroll the heavens which were of old, and opening 
the new heaven to view. And with that passing 
away of heaven, the earth also could not but pass 
away. For inseparable from the fatherhood of 
God is the brotherhood of man. When once our 
eyes have looked up into heaven and beheld there, 
enthroned over all in holiness and love, our Father- 
God, in turning them once more upon the earth, 
what shall we surely see? Must it not be that we 
shall recognize in all humanity our brother man? 
To take that one word of Jesus as our name for 
God, how vast the change it makes for us with 
everything, both in heaven and upon the earth! 
There, at least, is one word of Christ's which, we 
may be sure, will never pass away.. What possibil- 
ity that a time will ever come, when some one will 
give the world a truer, higher, better name to call 
God by than this word Father. Does any one pre- 
sume to think that he may some time and some 
where hit upon a superior, a diviner name? Let the 
sages of every land, let the thinkers, scholars, the 
men of all sorts of genius get together in one grand 
world's convocation, to agree upon the name for 
God that shall mean the most and be to them 
most richly satisfying, and should their choice be 
any other word than this which Jesus gave, it would 
be something vastly less. God is the Father, God 
is love. Whatever else may pass away, of all that 
enters into the thought and speech of man, those 



86 IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST, 

are words which shall never pass away. Whatever 
light may still break forth from those words upon 
our human life, and doubtless there will be much, 
there is no light which ever can break forth with 
brightness beyond what is in them. So far as a 
name for God is concerned, Jesus spoke the last 
word that ever will be spoken : the word that shall 
not pass away, for there is no word beside it which 
would not be something less divine. And in like 
manner is it with other words he spoke. His names 
for our humanity, son, brother, are words which 
shall not pass away. His words as to sin, the loss, 
the waste, the foulness of it, his word of forgive- 
ness, his word of righteousness, his word which 
fills out the bare idea of immortality with the full- 
ness of eternal life, — all these are words which 
shall not pass away. 

And the reason of it is not far to seek. It is 
already more than hinted at. The words of our 
Lord are imperishable, because of the reality in 
them greater and fuller than in any other words. 
Jesus himself expressed this in a single sentence: 
''The words I speak unto you they are spirit, and 
they are life." He spake as never man spake, 
because in all his speaking he himself was the 
Word. His utterance was in all things self utter- 
ance. The reality of what he gave voice to was 
in his own life and person as the Son of man. It 
was so he answered, when people came to him say- 
ing, ''Who art thou?" "Even the very thing which 
I have been speaking to you from the beginning." 



IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 87 

There was an entire oneness of all that Jesus said 
with what he was, with what actually lived and 
abounded in him. It is hard for us to do more 
than repeat his statement of it, for so much of 
our speaking is of a different sort. With us, so 
commonly, there is little of ourselves in the words 
we use. At best we speak that we do know, or 
what we feel. At some rarest moment, perhaps, 
we do put into our words the very life we are liv- 
ing. That rare thing was what Christ did in all 
his speaking. So he could say, — ''My words are 
spirit, my words are life." What I say is one and 
the same with what I am. Hence were his words 
imperishable: so shall they not pass away, though 
the earth be removed and the heavens vanish like 
smoke. 

And another reason why the words of Christ are 
imperishable agrees well with this. It is empha- 
sized by the very fact that he did not commit his 
words to writing. He did better than that. He 
committed them to the faith and love of men and 
women made alive by them. He wrote them on 
the living tablets of human hearts. Words written 
on tables of stone, though they be words of God 
and graven by the very finger of God, might perish, 
as when Moses, in hot anger at sight of the golden 
calf, cast them from his hands and broke them 
beneath the mount. Words written on parchment 
with indelible ink may become a dead language, 
though the truth they speak be divine. But words 
which themselves are spirit and life, when trai:;- 



88 IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 

scribed into acts of faith and love, into character 
that is true and holy, cannot pass away. Nothing 
else in all this world, nothing else in all the eter- 
nities is so enduring. Such are the words of Jesus, 
as he speaks to men, himself the very Word of God 
made flesh. He and he only has the words which 
for us to hear and heed, to believe and keep is 
everlasting life. 

This then is what it belongs to us to do with 
words which have not passed away, but speak still 
as directly and forcibly to us as to those who first 
heard them in synagogue or temple, by lake shore 
or on mountain side: to take them to ourselves, so 
that they may make record of their truth once 
more in us, may write themselves out anew in the 
Christly quality and spirit of our deeds and char- 
acter. Some who first heard them turned from 
them offended and protesting: ''These are hard 
sayings, who can hear them.'' Others welcomed 
them, saying, ''Lord to whom shall we go? Thou 
hast the words of eternal life." So let us not pass 
them by, but lay hold upon them with fullest 
trust in him who speaks them. Would you have 
the life you live an enduring, an eternal life. Give 
all heed to the words of him who so speaks to you. 
Continue in them. Let them be in you and abound 
and they will give proof anew that they are imper- 
ishable by making the life that you live according 
to them as eternal, as undying as are they them- 
selves. 



THE WORD OF THE LORD IN THE 
POTTER'S HOUSE. 

Then went I down to the potter's house, andj 
behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the 
vessel that he made of clay was marred in the 
hand of the potter: so he made it again another 
vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. — 
Jer. 18 : 3, 4. 

Object teaching, then, in these days of normal 
classes and kindergartens, is no new thing under 
the sun. It is a very old method of teaching. The 
scriptures abound with it. The Great Teacher of 
all was the greatest among object teachers. "With- 
out a parable spake he not unto them." Another 
master in the art of it was Jeremiah, the prophet. 
His call to be a prophet was the double object 
lesson of an almond rod and a seething cauldron. 
Repeatedly his messages from the Lord to the 
people of his time were according to this method. 
One time it was a girdle he was bidden take and 
wear awhile and then hide in a hole of the rock 
till it was spoiled, to teach Judah how good for 
nothing it would become, unless it should cleave 
to God as a girdle to the loins of a man. Again 
it was an earthen bottle, which he carried into the 
valley of Tophet and there broke, in the sight of 
the men who went with him, to let them see how 



90 THE WORD OF THE LORD 

God would break their city, beyond possibility of 
mending '^because they have hardened their necks.'' 
Then there was the object lesson of two baskets of 
figs, the good and the bad; of bonds and yokes 
which the prophet wore on his neck; of his redeem- 
ing, by purchase, his kinsman's field; of the stones 
which he hid in Pharaoh's brick-kilns; of the stone 
which was bound to the book of his prophecies, to 
sink it in the river Euphrates. 

Rich in object teaching, almost dramatic in 
parts, from the boldness of it, is the book of Jere- 
miah the prophet. Perhaps the finest instance of 
them all is this passage of our text. Here is the 
account of it, largely in his own graphic words. 
'The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, 
saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, 
and there I will cause thee to hear my words. 
Then went I down to the potter's house, and, 
behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And 
the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the 
hand of the potter: so he made it again another 
vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it. 
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: 
O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this 
potter? saith the Lord." Let us go in the proph- 
et's company this morning to the potter's house 
and see if God will not there cause us to hear his 
word, in the word which he caused Jeremiah to 
hear. 

To begin with, there is this word from the Lord 
in the potter's house as we watch him at work 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE. 91 

with his wheels. God has a design in each one oL 
our lives, which he is seeking by all means to work 
out. Observe how the potter goes at his work. 
He takes a lump of clay, already mixed and kneaded 
with exceeding care, and lays it upon the flat sur- 
face of the upper wheel. Then with his feet on the 
under wheel he sets it revolving. Next he puts his 
thumb in the center of the clay and begins hollow- 
ing it out. After a little, with one hand pressing 
on the outside and the other from within, he shapes 
it into a smooth cylindrical wall. "Thus," to 
borrow a technologist's words, "by humoring the 
clay, elongating the vessel, again depressing it, 
widening it, and by continued manipulation in 
this manner, the most exquisite shapes are pro- 
duced.'^ But there is something which goes before 
all this, with each piece of work in the hands of the 
potter. It is the design in the potter's mind, as to 
what the vessel is to be when it is made. The 
whole process is determined by that, the amount 
of clay he puts on his wheel at any one time, every 
touch of his hands in manipulating the mass. 
Would a potter put clay on his wheel, set it revolv- 
ing, lay his hands to it, without any idea of the 
sort of vessel to result? Not if he be in earnest; 
not if he be at all workmanlike. The form and 
capacity of the vessel when it shall be done, are 
clearly in his mind to begin with. Whether it is 
to be a jar, holding so much, with the smallest 
possible dimensions, or a vase, having the utmost 
of strength with most shapely and graceful pro- 



92 THE WORD OF THE LORD 

portions, all that is decided when the clay is first 
placed on the wheel. Corresponding to the clay- 
in his hand is the design in his mind. With a view 
to that he sets it whirling on his wheel. With a 
view to that is every touch and pressure of his 
hand on the clay. 

And here does not the word of the Lord begin to 
come to us in the potter's house, as it did to the 
prophet of old? '' Behold, as clay is in the potter's 
hand, so are ye in my hand, saith the Lord." A 
picture for each one of us, of what his own life is in 
the hands of God, is that lump of clay, upon which 
we see the potter working with so much pains and 
skill. Corresponding to it is the design for each 
one of us which God, also, has in mind. We say 
very commonly of our human life, that it is in the 
hands of God. What do we mean by it? Simply 
that we are subject to a power that is mightier 
than ourselves? Then it is a very shallow saying. 
As the prophet teaches it to us, in the potter's 
house, it is far greater truth than that. It means 
that we are in God's hands, with a view to what 
God has in mind to do with us and make of us. 
That is the providence of God in any true sense of 
the phrase, — his having in view a purpose already 
settled upon, toward which he works. The potter's 
providence is the touch and pressure of his hands 
upon the clay with a view to the vessel he purposes 
to make. And so of God's Providence, the touch 
and pressure of his divine hand upon our humanity, 
with a view to what the divine mind is intending 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE. 93 

to make of our humanity. Corresponding to 
every human Hfe which God sets revolving on the 
wheel of time, is a design in his eternal mind, upon 
which he bends his infinite power and skill that he 
may work out and realize. Just this is the witness 
of scripture throughout to our human life. The 
Son of man himself certified and confirmed it, 
without fear of exaggeration, when he said, " But 
even the hairs of your head are all numbered." 
It was the fact of his own life of which he was 
always aware, to which he often appealed. As 
early as his twelfth year, life for him meant the 
purpose and arrangement of his Father in heaven. 
For a particular end he was born, he told Pilate; 
for a particular cause he had come into the world. 
A favorite word with him in speaking of his life 
upon earth was *' fulfillment." In all the events 
and experience of it human life for him was the 
realizing of a great divine idea and intent, for 
which he had come into the world. Even to lay 
down his life on the cross meant, ''It is finished." 
God's great design in his life was thereby fully 
wrought out. What witness could be so conclusive 
as this that God has his design in and for eveiy 
human life, toward which he is working in all his 
dealings with it. The one perfect human life ever 
seen in the world was the entire realization of all 
that God intended it to be. 

Another witness to it, however, there is, of a far 
different kind, in the history of Israel as a people. 
Back at the first, when he called Abraham to leave 



94 THE WORD OF THE LORD 

home and kindred for a land to be showed him, the 
design of it stands in the foreground. More 
sharply is it outlined when he called the tribes out 
of Egypt to enter and possess a land of their own. 
" Ye shall be unto me an holy nation." To make of 
them a nation in which self government should be 
realized through direct fealty and obedience to 
God, was the divine design in Israel's life. With a 
view to this he gave them his law, raised up judges, 
sent prophets among them. In furtherance of 
it he wrought manifold works, both of deliverance 
and judgment upon them. How large a part of 
the Old Testament is simply the oft-repeated 
reminder to Israel of God's purpose in their life 
as a people. And it is one point of many in 
which the history of Israel is a picture of God's 
dealings with individual men. As in Israel's 
peculiar national life there was a purpose of God, 
so is there a divine purpose in what is peculiar, 
what is individual in the life of each one of us. As 
God's dealings with Israel were by way of working 
out his divine plan in their life, so do his dealings 
with us have in view what he is purposing for each 
of us in person. To each of us, personally, as to 
the house of Israel, this is God's word, ''As the 
clay is in the hands of the potter, so are ye in my 
hands, saith the Lord." Not in a mere passive 
way, but in the way of his own working out in us, 
with us, through us a perfect design of his own. 

This is the first lesson of all in the potter's house. 
And how needful, how vital for every one of us 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE. 95 

to learn it. Here we are in this world with these 
lives of ours, no two of them aUke, each having 
its individuality, as has each person's face. Not 
by any accident is it so. It is by divine intent. 
Corresponding to each one of them is the design 
which God has in mind. Each one of our lives is 
set in its own peculiar way upon the revolving years, 
is touched in its peculiar way by the fingers of provi- 
dence, because, to adapt somewhat another's words, 
it has a complete and perfect plan cherished for it 
in the heart of God, — a divine biography marked 
out for it to fulfill. Each person's life, your life, 
my life is designed to be a complete and beautiful 
whole, an experience led on by God, a drama of 
perfect art, with no part wanting, a divine study 
for the man himself and for others. What a 
thought is this for every human soul to cherish. 
What dignity does it add to human life. We 
live in the divine thought. We fill a place in the 
everlasting plan of God's intelligence. We never 
sink below his care; we never drop out of his 
counsel. ''As the clay is in the hand of the potter, 
so are ye in mine hand, saith the Lord." 

But the word of the Lord by his prophet in the 
potter's house goes farther than this. It tells us 
also what God's design is in each human life, even 
to make the most of it and the best that it is capable 
of. So it certainly is that the potter works with 
each piece of the clay that he puts on his wheel. 
He proposes to make the most of his clay. He 
handles it so as to get from it the best shape and 



96 THE WORD OF THE LORD 

quality of a vessel of which it admits. The very 
material he works with is warrant that he will work 
it for all it is worth. Potter's clay is no common 
earth that can be dug up anywhere. The best of 
it is made of rare ingredients carefully prepared and 
mingled together. So valuable is the clay for the 
choicer makes of pottery that the composition is a 
secret from all but the makers. Visit the potteries 
at Sevres, just outside of Paris. They will let you 
see how that world-renowned ware is wrought on 
the wheels. But don't expect they will admit you 
to the mixing room and tell you the secret of the 
clay. With clay so rare and precious as that on 
his wheel do you suppose the potter intends to 
make of it anything cheap or rude or poor? From 
the very fineness of his material you know that it 
is a vessel of exquisite shape and surpassing quality 
that he had in mind. The potter's design corre- 
sponds to what his clay is capable of. Again 
does not the word of the Lord come to us in the 
potter's house? ''As the clay is in hand of the 
potter so are ye in mine hand, saith the Lord." 
See what clay this is that God has on the wheel of his 
providence in every human life. Beside all else 
in his whole universe, what precious material is 
this. What ingredients are in it, what union of 
the best in nature with what is altogether above 
mere nature. What mysterious mingling of the 
spiritual with the physical is this human being of 
ours. Who but the maker of it knows anything 
like the whole secret of it. What capabilities 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE. 97 

belong to it; what enlargement it admits of, what 
refinement, what enrichment. Can it be anything 
mean or poor that God means to make when he 
works with such material as that? Too precious 
in the sight of God, too capable of all that is most 
pleasing to God is the humanity in each of us, to 
allow of that. The most, the best of which each 
one of us is capable, that is God's design for us 
all. With a view to that are all his dealings with 
us. It is a plan so great that as yet we can know it 
only in part. But the outline of it, at least, is 
clear, when he calls us to be his children in Jesus 
Christ. Sonship with God; is not that just another 
name for the most and best that any human life is 
capable of? That is the pattern after which the 
Divine Artificer is doing his divine utmost to shape 
each of us. With a view to this we are in his hands 
as clay in the hand of the potter. 

Beyond this, still, speaks the word of the Lord in 
the potter's house. It was what the prophet was 
bidden especially to note. As he wrought upon 
the wheels, while Jeremiah watched, the potter 
did not make the vessel which he first designed. 
From some cause his.4ilaji.JKa^ thwarted. And the 
vessel that he made of clay was marred in the 
hand of the potter. What then? Did he give it 
up? Did he throw it away as so much waste? 
Not so! He modified his design and went on to 
make of it the next best thing. So he made it 
again, another vessel, as seemed good to the potter 
to make it. Then came the word of the Lord, 

7 



98 THE WORD OF THE LOUD 

saying, ^'0 House of Israel, cannot I do with you 
as this potter, saith the Lord." God has his 
design in each human life. God's design for each 
human life is to make of it the most and best it is 
capable of. But what if, from any cause, the work 
gets marred in his hands? Cannot he do as did 
the potter? Cannot he do as any good workman 
does when he works with precious material? If 
something arises to mar his original design he does 
not waste it. He makes of it the next best thing. 
Shall not God be equally workmanlike with these 
human lives of ours as he has them in hand? And 
here the teaching goes by contrast as well as resem- 
blance. How the vessel was marred in the potter's 
hand, the prophet does not say; perhaps by care- 
lessness; more likely by defect in the clay. But 
human lives get marred in God's hands only from 
a single cause. One ingredient of them is different 
from any in potter's clay. It is their power of 
choice, either for God's plan or against it. It is 
possible for every one of us, by willfulness, to mar 
his own life in the very hands of God. Our self- 
will, the wrong we do, interfere with God's design 
for our life and make us so much the less capable 
of the most and best he is seeking to make of us. 
Only thus is the vessel ever marred in God's hands, 
as he works with the clay of our human life. But 
how much of such marring there is. How many a 
life has this chapter in its biography, ^'And the 
vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand 
of the potter." What can God do with such 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE. 99 

marred human lives? Shall he cast them off from 
his wheel as so much waste material? No; he 
can do with them as the potter. ''So he made it 
again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter 
to make it." If by willfulness we spoil God's 
first design in our life, then he will modify it and go 
on making of us the next best thing. The very 
best that we will allow him to do for us and with 
us, he will by no means fail to do. Only as we 
make ourselves incapable of it does he ever scale 
down his design. 

So long as there is any possibility of good and 
worth in our lives, God is working upon us to save 
and to realize it for us. And then, to quote Dr. 
Bushnell's forcible words: ''When he cannot use 
us any more for our own good, he will use us for 
the good of others, — an example of the misery 
and horrible desperation to which any soul must 
come when all the good ends, and all the holy call- 
ings of God's friendly and fatherly purpose are 
exhausted. Or it may be that now, remitting 
all other plans and purposes in our behalf, he will 
thenceforth use us, wholly against our will, to be 
the demonstration of his justice and avenging 
power before the eyes of mankind, saying over us 
as he did over Pharaoh in the day of his judgment; 
"Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, 
that I might show my power in thee, that my 
name might be declared throughout the earth." 
Doubtless he had other and more genial plans for 
this bad man, if only he could have accepted such; 



100 THE WORD OF THE LORD 

but upon his repeated rejection of these, God 
turned his mighty counsels on him wholly on the 
use to be made of him as a reprobate. How many 
Pharaohs in our common life refuse every other 
use that God will make of them, choosing only 
to figure in their small way as reprobates." 

How clearly it was thus with the House of Israel 
is part of the object- teaching before us. How many 
times the goodly vessel God sought to make of 
that people was marred in his hand. What did 
he do? Give them up? Cast away his people? 
The very farthest from that. He made it again 
another vessel, as seemed good to him. At the 
outset, as he began at Sinai to mould its life as a 
nation, the vessel was marred in his hand. So 
he made it again another vessel by forty years in 
the desert. Once fairly settled in a land of their 
own, the vessel was marred again in his hand and 
he made it again another vessel by giving them, 
a king. In the days of Solomon it began to seem 
as if the vessel was nearing its perfect proportions, 
when suddenly again it was marred in his hand. 
But he kept on making it another vessel, as seemed 
good to him. Again it was marred and again 
he made from the very remnant of it another vessel, 
by the seventy years of captivity. At last, in the 
fullness of the times, when he sent forth his Son, 
born an Israelite, it was marred again by its refusal 
of him» Again he made it another vessel, but this 
time a vessel of wrath, fitted to destruction, that 
he might make known the riches of his glory on the 



IN THE POTTER'S HOUSE, 101 

vessels of mercy. ^'0 House of Israel, cannot I 
do with you as this potter, saith the Lord." How 
thoroughly he did it, is told in that saddest of all 
sentences, spoken by our Lord with tears in his 
voice as well as upon his face: "How often would 
I have gathered you but ye would not." And it 
is a word of the Lord which still speaks, speaks 
directly to each one of us. Has any one marred 
his own life, so that but a remnant, only a fraction 
of it is left? Let him commit that to God, to his 
will and working, and he will make the very best 
out of it, that is still possible to it, that still it is 
capable of. Is life yet fresh with you, as yet 
marred but little? Enter at once into God's 
purpose for you. Take his plan of life for your 
own, and work with him for making the best and 
the most of yourself. Don't mar your life any 
more in his hand. Don't make it needful for him 
to make you over, after any smaller or cheaper 
pattern. As clay in the hand of the potter, be 
responsive to his every movement and touch. 
And God's design in your life will at length be ful- 
filled. He will make you a vessel unto honor, a 
vessel of mercy, rare and resplendent with his own 
beauty of holiness, his own eternal and ineffable 
glory. ''Cannot I do with you as this potter, 
saith the Lord." 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION. 

Why should it he thought a thing incredible with 
you that God should raise the deadf — Acts 26 : 8. 

It is the very heart of the matter to which we are 
taken by this question of Paul to Agrippa. BeUef 
in the resurrection is apt to seem to us an especially 
difficult thing; it is so contrary to the common 
experience of men. What we see and know of 
this world seems to be all entirely against it. And 
what is there to give us reasonable and tenable 
ground for such belief? Instances enough there 
have been and are of persons apparently dead who 
have come back to life. But their very return to 
life is what makes it conclusive that they did not 
actually die. Alleged reappearances of the dead, 
in some strange bodily form, have been plenty 
enough. But so little will they bear anything 
like open and rigid investigation, so largely are they 
traceable to illusion and humbug, that as yet they 
have very small claim to be credible. Everywhere 
it has been a part of the superstition about ghosts, 
that they vanish with the cock-crowing and dawn 
of the day. So vanishes the great mass of so- 
called spirit manifestation, when the light is turned 
upon it, when it is brought out into the open day- 
light of thorough research. ''The undiscovered 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 103 

country from whose bourne no traveler returns" 
continues to describe what death is to the common, 
not to say universal, observation of men. Not 
since New Testament times has there been a credi- 
ble exception of which we know. And for this 
very reason we find it hard to give credit to the 
few cases of the dead brought to life which appear 
in the New Testament record. For they are very 
few. And they all connect very closely with the 
ministry of Jesus and his two chief apostles. If 
these were due to the fondness of New Testament 
writers for multiplying marvels, then at least we 
must credit them with exercising remarkable 
reserve. With the whole field open for imagina- 
tion and invention, they were so sparing about it 
as to attribute to Jesus only three instances of 
raising the dead and one each to Peter and Paul. 
But in any case these were a kind of revival rather 
than a true resurrection. For the ruler's daughter 
and the widow's son, Lazarus, Tabitha, Eutichus 
must all, at some time again, have returned unto 
death. The one real rising from the dead which 
the New Testament records is that of Jesus him- 
self, when, the third day after he had been put to 
death on a Roman cross and entombed under 
Roman guard and seal, the tomb was found open 
and empty, his body had disappeared, and he him- 
self through forty days appeared to his disciples 
alive, not under the common human conditions, 
but clothed again in his humanity for life in a world 
very different from this. Is it a credible thing? 



104 CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 

Is there a way that is open to us, as reasonable 
beings, to beheve it? When we come up to it on 
the level of common acquaintance with our human 
world, it does seem to us an incredible thing. It 
is as when we find ourselves at the face of some 
sheer precipice, rising before us out of the plain. 
It halts us hopelessly there; we cannot scale it. 
So it was to Herod Agrippa, as he heard Paul dis- 
coursing of Jesus and the resurrection. So it was 
to Festus, the Roman. The man, he thought, must 
be beside himself to speak of such a thing, as if it 
were true! And it had been precisely the same to 
Paul himself, some years before. When the report 
first came to his ears that Jesus, who was crucified, 
was alive again from the dead, his whole thought 
of it was as an incredible thing. He was out of 
all patience with people who were credulous enough 
to believe it, was fairly furious against them for 
being so wrong-headed and unreasonable. Even 
they, but a little while before, had thought just 
the same. Idle tales, it seemed to Peter and the 
rest when tidings first came that their Lord had 
been raised from the dead. It was to them, on 
that common level, an incredible thing. But Paul, 
with these others, found a way of approaching 
the matter which made it no longer an incredible 
thing, but a sober and reasonable faith. It was 
this he was trying to show to Agrippa by the ques- 
tion before us: ''Why should it be thought a 
thing incredible with you that God should raise 
the dead?'' 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 105 

What was his approach to truth of the resurrec- 
tion? Simply faith in the one living God. With 
God to believe in, who made the world and all 
things that are therein, does not the difficulty of 
believing in life again from the dead very largely 
disappear? Here is this life of ours in the world 
that now is. That is credible at least. Whence 
did it come? Did it originate itself? Or is there 
One great enough, divine enough to be its Author 
and Giver? That, too, is easier to believe than it 
is to deny, as the faiths of men everywhere abun- 
dantly witness. Can we believe in God as Author 
of the life which we already have? Why then 
should it be thought a thing incredible with us, that 
God, the same who made us living souls, who has 
given us our present life, intelligent, reasoning, 
morally free, should give us anew, in a world beyond 
this, the very fullness of life? Resurrection from 
the dead can be held an impossible belief only on the 
ground that there is no God at all. The Sadducee 
who did not believe in any spiritual existence 
whatever, as a matter of course denied the resur- 
rection. The materialist, or atheist of any descrip- 
tion, naturally holds it an impossible thing. But 
even the agnostic, by his very creed, is bound to 
confess that it is possible, at least, for the dead to 
be raised. How much more the believer in God, 
as ever living, in whom all things live which already 
have life. To him life again from the dead is more 
than a bare possibility. It is a credible thing. 
It is open for him to believe. His very faith in 



106 CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION, 

God brings him up to the subject as upon the 
same level with it, so that it need not be a difficult 
thing, ought to be a free and ready and reasonable 
thing for him to enter into it as a part of his faith. 
Is there a God over all? Does this world in which 
we live, and our life in it proceed from one who 
himself, ever liveth, to whom perfect intelligence 
and all-power belong? Have we so much as that 
rudiment of faith, then why should it be thought 
a thing incredible with us, that God should raise 
the dead? This is the Apostle's appeal in its baldest 
logical form. This of itself might well be conclu- 
sive and satisfactory enough. But when it comes 
to the revealing of God to us through Jesus Christ, 
it becomes a still more moving appeal, full of 
tenderness and comfort as well as conclusive, an 
appeal which satisfies the heart as well as the 
reason. 

For God, as Christ makes him known to us, is 
not only the Author of our bodily life; he is the 
Father of our spirits. It is he who hath, not simply 
made us, but made us to be children of his own. 
Not merely with almighty power does God hold 
our lives in his hand, but with infinite love, accord- 
ing to Christ. He numbers the very hairs of our 
head. We are of value to him, not simply more in 
amount than many sparrows, but more with a higher 
kind of value. Our souls are precious in his sight 
with the worth of his own image upon them, with 
capacity in them for thought, for love and for 
holiness akin to his own. So great is his love for 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 107 

us, that he has redeemed us, not with corruptible 
things as silver and gold, but with the precious 
blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish or 
spot. This is the God we believe in, if our faith 
is Christian, if we hold for the truth what Christ 
taught of God. Why then should it be thought 
a thing incredible with us that God, being such, 
having such a character, and such love for the 
souls of men, should raise the dead? Would it 
not rather be the incredible thing that He, that 
such a God, should give over the human spirit 
again to nothingness when the body dies? Is that 
easy to believe, especially when the human spirit 
has committed itself to the love of God, has been 
living its life in the body as one of his children, has 
been unfolding its spiritual powers in doing the 
will of God, has been taking upon it the beauty, 
loveliness, strength and worth of highest manhood? 
Take it in the case of this very man who spoke the 
words before us. There was Paul, getting well 
on toward the end of his earthly course ; who would 
soon speak of himself as Paul the aged; what a life 
that man had been living; what service of God 
and humanity he had been fulfilling, and all, it 
would seem, in a body rather slight and frail. But 
if his outward man was perishing, his inward man 
had gone on to even greater heights of spiritual 
robustness, and richness and ripeness. What 
powers of mind and of heart were in him. In what 
wealth both of beauty and strength they appeared 
as he stood there a prisoner speaking for himself. 



108 CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 

It is a spectacle of sheer sterling manhood, fine in 
its every quality, sound through and through. 
What was to become of all that? When he went on 
to Rome, and there, still fighting his good fight, 
fell at the hand of Nero's headsman, was that to be 
the end of it all? Did that choice human spirit, 
so alive with the very spirit of God, so redeemed 
to purity and fullness of life, so refined as gold from 
the furnace, so chastened and beautified by God's 
own hand, did it cease to be, altogether, when the 
life went out from that frail and perishing body? 
Is it a credible thing that God should bring to 
nothingness such a soul as that, after he had 
redeemed it and refined it into such quality and 
wealth of character, as most pleases him, as is 
most like his own? Would a gardener cut down 
the tree he had planted and cultivated with exceed- 
ing care, just as its fullness of fruitage was beginning 
to appear? Would the lapidary take a diamond 
that he had been toilsomely cutting and polishing 
out of the rough, till it flashed in the sunlight and 
shone like a star, and then smash it to bits on an 
anvil, or burn it to dust in an oxygen flame? Why 
then should it be thought a thing incredible with 
us that God should raise up such a great soul as 
Paul's to newness of life, in a world where its 
spiritual powers shall have full scope and be entirely 
at home? Is it not easier than anji:hing else to 
believe, if so be that God lives and is at all such in 
his character and will as Jesus has revealed him to 
be? 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 109 

And it is no less so when the life of man is cut 
off from earth in what seems to be the midst of its 
years. For the clearest instance of all is just 
such an one. It is that of Jesus, Son of man. 
There was a human life, lived for thirty years in 
almost total seclusion from public notice, then for 
three short years stood forth in light as full and 
as fierce as ever beat upon a throne. But brighter 
even than the light which beat upon it was the 
light of truth and of goodness with which it shone 
amid the darkness of this world. All that is pleas- 
ing to God in the life of humanity was there, cer- 
tainly, if God is love and delights in what is holy 
and true. No falseness or uncleanness there to 
offend the pure eyes of him to whom all things are 
naked and open. That life of Jesus, Son of man, — 
how full of truth and grace, how strong in every 
moral quality, how rich with every spiritual grace, 
how overflowing with all deeds of goodness and of 
love! That character of his, what a summing up 
of all manly virtue, of all human excellence! But 
so soon came the cross with its deadly work! The 
dew of his youth was still upon him when he was 
cut off out of the land of the living. Was it the 
end of that one perfect man who ever lived on the 
earth, when he was numbered among the dead? 
Would God suffer his Holy One, so pleasing to him, 
so full of all spiritual worth, to cease forever from 
life? Is it a credible thing? Can' we easily believe 
it? Surely not if we hold God to be what Christ 
has taught us he is. Such an one as the Son of 



110 CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. 

man, in spirit, in life, in character might go down 
to death ; but it was not possible that he should be 
holden of it, God being what he is. This is the 
apostle's appeal for the reasonableness of the resur- 
rection at its fullest and strongest. With what 
Jesus was in his holy humanity, and with what he 
showed the very heart of deity to be, why should it 
be thought a thing incredible with us that God 
should raise the dead? 

And it is an appeal which we may all of us take 
home very close to ourselves. There are still men 
and women who ripen with age into saintliness of 
spirit and character, like Paul the aged. After 
their bodily powers have begun to fade as a leaf, 
the tree of life with them appears heavy laden with 
golden spiritual fruit. Have we not all known 
them, loved them, been refreshed by their ripeness 
of spiritual flavor? And then some day we have 
missed them from our midst, and the world has 
seemed tamer and poorer to us. What shall we 
think? Has all that choiceness of soul, that saint- 
liness of life and of character gone out of existence 
forever? Did all that lovehness of spirit pass into 
nothingness when the breath went out of their 
bodies? If there be no God who is spirit, who him- 
self is love, it may be so; better indeed that it 
should be so. For without God who is spirit and 
love, such spirits could nowhere be forever at 
home. But with God in his heaven, enthroned 
in holiness, diademed in love, as he sent his Son 
to earth to make him known, is it after all so very 



CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION. Ill 

hard a thing to believe that he will raise up such 
saintly souls again, to live forever with him in 
blessedness and peace? Why should it be thought 
incredible? What other faith so sober and so 
reasonable? 

And equally is it so with other lives which do 
not come in this world to the maturity of years. 
Like the life of Jesus himself they are cut off mid- 
way, or even earlier, just as they have fairly begun 
to unfold with spiritual powers. While yet all 
is promise with them, while mind and soul are still 
in bud and blossom, they fall before the swift 
scythe of death and are seen no more in this earthly 
field. Again what shall we think? Is all that so 
much blighted hope? Do those unfolding powers 
of mind and soul cease from all existence when the 
youthful pulse no longer beats? Do these buddings 
and blossomings of spiritual promise pass into 
nothingness, become a mere memory when they are 
no longer here to adorn this world with their beauty 
and their sweetness? If there be no God who is 
the Father of our spirits, whose kingdom is of such 
as are childlike in trust of him and openness of 
soul toward him, then it may be so. But so long 
as God is God, so long as his is the infinite Father's 
heart, tender above all toward his little ones, why 
should it be a hard thing for us to believe that he 
sometimes takes human lives out of this world in 
the very flowering of their spiritual powers, that 
he may bring them to their fullest fruitage in his 
nearer presence? Is it not reasonable? Is it not 



112 CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION, 

a faith well grounded in what our Lord has made 
known to us of the truth, the character, the will of 
God? Why should it be thought a thing incredible 
with us that God should raise the dead? Only let 
us believe in him, only let us know him as our 
Father, love the things he loves, with him prize 
spiritual worth above all else, and it cannot be very 
difficult for us to believe that he brought again from 
the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that all who have 
fallen asleep in Christ will God bring with him, 
that through Christ he will raise us up to the fullness 
of undying life. 



W^m 



■^ 




NEW YORK, 1881. 



SELF-CULTIVATION FOR OTHERS' 
SAKE. 

And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they 
also might he sanctified through the truth. — John 
17 : 19. 

This saying of Jesus lays open before us one of 
the deepest truths of our life. It certifies to us 
the oneness, at bottom, of two things commonly 
thought of as opposed to each other. The most one 
can make of himself, and the most he can do for 
the benefit of other people, are apt to be looked 
upon as conflicting purposes in life. If either be 
taken, it is supposed to involve surrender of the 
other. Achievement with either is reckoned to 
be at expense of the other. Much that is said in 
these days, somewhat learnedly, about altruism 
and egoism, takes this for granted. Living to 
make the most of oneself is held to be necessarily 
selfish; and a life given up to the service of others 
is counted as neglect of oneself. And upon this 
supposition outcry is made against Christianity 
because it bids men seek their own salvation and 
the highest of blessing for themselves. The Chris- 
tian hope of heaven is called other-worldliness. 
The one really unselfish life, we are told, is when 
a person lives solely for the good of others, and not 
at all for his own good, when he is all intent upon 

8 



114 SELF-CULTIVATION 

doing the most for others, without regard to making 
the most of himself. 

How shallow is such an idea becomes very appar- 
ent when, side by side with it, is put this saying of 
Jesus. "For their sakes, I sanctify myself, that 
they also might be sanctified." With Jesus, Son 
of man, making the most of himself and doing the 
most for others were not conflicting motives of 
life ; they were rather the two points which must be 
brought into line if we would give life anything 
like singleness of aim. The service which Christ 
was intent upon doing for humanity was not 
something different from what he was intent upon 
being, in his own person and character. It was 
precisely the same thing. His name for it, in both 
cases, is "sanctify," for which, unfortunately, our 
English word is not half strong enough. But the 
point just now is this: whatever the name by which 
it is called, Christ's aim, in the matter of his own 
person and character, was identical with what he 
was aiming at as a matter of service for other men. 
His making the most of himself coincided exactly 
with the most that he was able to do for others. 
His self- sanctifying was for sake of the sanctifying 
he would minister to others. The power to sanc- 
tify others became his by the sanctifying of himself. 
This oneness of self-cultivation with service of 
others, in Jesus our Lord, is what comes to us es- 
pecially as a message this morning. And how 
great, how vital, how welcome a message it is; 
how it sets at rest for us a most weighty question 



FOR OTHERS' SAKE. 115 

of our life; what harmony it makes between forces 
in our living which so often seem to conflict. What 
shall I have for my object in life? Shall I aim at 
the most and the best I can possibly be, in my own 
personal manhood, or at the most and the best 
I can possibly do, for the benefit of others? Shall 
I be intent upon cultivating, developing, improv- 
ing myself, in all the powers and capacities which 
are personally mine, or shall I forego cultivation 
of myself, in my eagerness and pains for the im- 
provement of others? How apt we are to be forc- 
ing for ourselves such questions as that. How 
often we split life apart for ourselves by such cleav- 
age as that, and make a sheer dilemma of it. And 
we do it with the notion that such is our life. But 
not such is it, according to the teaching and spirit 
of Christ. Not such is the truth of it, as it is in 
him. He redeems our life for us from all such 
dilemma. He summons us to a way of living in 
which the most we can make of ourselves and 
the most we can do for others are not conflicting 
motives but one single aim; in which self-cultiva- 
tion and service of others do not clash and counter- 
act, but unite, as centripetal and centrifugal 
forces acting together give this earth of ours its 
free and sure path among other worlds in the vast 
field of space. Christ calls us to salvation in which 
the saving of ourselves, and the saving of others 
go hand in hand. The love of our neighbor, which 
he lays as commandment upon us, is no lessening 
of respect for ourselves. Rather is it love which 



116 SELF-CULTIVATION 

finds its full measure in the love we have for our- 
selves. The service of others which he sets before 
us as an object to live for, involves no neglect of 
the cultivation, enlargement, improvement of 
ourselves. A man's true self-cultivation and his 
real usefulness in the world are not each at expense 
of the other. Rather is the fulfillment of each to 
be found in the other. Our own salvation is the 
first of all qualifications to be of help in the saving 
of others. And we best work out our own salva- 
tion by diligence in the saving of others. We can 
be of real blessing to others only as we are blessed 
ourselves. And the fullness of blessing comes to 
us, when others are most richly blessed by means 
of us. Not by neglect of ourselves do we render 
true service to others. Rather by giving most 
diligent heed to ourselves. And our finest self- 
cultivation is reached, through the pains that we 
take for the improvement of other people. It is 
little love we ever have for our neighbor, unless 
there be in us a high self respect to which it measures 
up. And both self love and love of neighbor are 
alike at the full when they stand on a level with 
each other. So it stands in the teachings of Jesus. 
And it was not more clear in his teaching than 
in the manner of life that he lived. The sentence 
of our text tells the story of his life, from beginning 
to end. '^For their sakes I sanctify myself, that 
they also might be sanctified." It is the common- 
est of all remarks which are made about the life 
of our Lord on the earth : that he lived it and gave it 



FOB OTHERS' SAKE. 117 

for the benefit of others. Nowhere in all the world 
has there ever been seen such another instance 
of altruism, as we are so fond of calling it to-day. 
Living for the good of other people is an art of 
which he was the one perfect Master. There is 
no other human life in which service, both in spirit 
and act has ever reached anything like so complete 
a fulfillment. This is a fact so plain all through the 
life of our Lord, that hardly any one fails to remark 
it. And along with this fact is another no less to 
be remarked; the life of Jesus is equally a perfect 
example of the highest self-cultivation. His exceed- 
ing care for the best good of all other men was 
matched by the care that he took to be wholly 
a good man himself. His painstaking to free other 
men from their sin was no greater than the pur- 
pose with which he was intent upon keeping him- 
self free from sin. The sinlessness of Christ is insep- 
arable from the sacrifice he made to save other men 
from their sins. His offering of himself for the 
service of others was so great and so helpful, 
because he had in himself such perfection of all 
personal quality and worth. This man had where- 
with to offer. He was Lamb of God to take away 
the sin of the world, not only because he tasted 
death for every man, but equally because he was 
without spot or blemish. That he gave himself 
for others, even unto death, was not of itself his 
redeeming of the world. Along with that was the 
perfecting of himself as Son of man, in every power 
and capacity which makes for manhood, in every 



118 SELF-CULTIVATION 

excellence of spirit and act by which a man makes 
the most of himself. Self-cultivation, in this its 
truest sense, had its one complete example in Jesus 
our Lord. More than any other man he sanctified 
himself. Far beyond all other men he gave dili- 
gent heed to the manner of life he should live and 
the manner of person he should be. Above all 
other men was he true to himself, was he both 
careful and faithful, that everything which is right, 
is honorable, is worthy, should be fulfilled in him- 
self. No other person was ever so intent as was 
Jesus, Son of man, upon making the most of him- 
self. And no other person ever approached him 
in the accomplishment of it. Here is a fact not 
to be lost sight of, in looking to Christ for an ex- 
ample of what is called altruism. Coupled with 
it is a certain egoism, a self-cultivation, a sanctify- 
ing of himself, which is equally pronounced, equally 
intense. It was by no negligence within the vine- 
yard of his own personal living that our Lord was 
able to do so much toward making other lives fruit- 
ful with good. Rather was self-cultivation with 
him a tending of that vine in which other lives 
were to be branches, by abiding in which they 
were to come to their fruitage of good. He went 
about doing good to others always with the volume 
of goodness in himself kept at the full. He made 
no attempt to help anybody to become anything 
which he was not already himself. When he said 
to a man, "Be thou clean," it was as one who had 
made sure that his own life was altogether clean. 



FOR OTHERS' SAKE. 119 

When he bade men ''be true/' it was as one who 
himself was the truth. In calling upon men to have 
God's will for the law of their life, it was as one 
whose very meat was to do the will of his Father. 
What he could do by way of help and blessing to 
others had its measure in that stature of a perfect 
man which he had fulfilled. That others, also, 
might be sanctified, he sanctified himself. 

And what was true in his case is the truth for 
us all to take to ourselves. The choice of an object 
for which to live is not between making the most of 
ourselves and doing most for the making of others. 
Both of these, together, make the one great object 
of life which is before us to choose in the calling of 
Christ. It is our own salvation and the saving 
of others, united into one single aim; it is the sanc- 
tifying of ourselves, that others also may be sancti- 
fied. Self-cultivation and service of others are not 
each at expense of the other; rather is each a neces- 
sity in order for the other to be. Consider it as a 
matter of the influence we can wield upon others 
for their moral betterment; that never can exceed 
the degree of moral improvement which is made in 
ourselves. No person ever succeeded in helping 
another up to any higher moral level than the one 
he stands on himself. No person ever was able to 
do good to others beyond the measure of goodness 
he has in himself. The man whose life is a curse 
to himself is not making it serve as a blessing to 
others. He who takes no pains to be personally a 
good man, is of quite as little service to any one else 



120 SELF-CULTIVATION 

for helping them to anything good. The moral 
uplift which any person can give to the lives of 
others is like water pressure ; the force of it is meas- 
ured by the height of the head. And equally true 
is it of the joy one may be the means of bringing 
into other people's lives. This is often spoken of 
as a worthy object to live for; living to make others 
happy, to give others joy. What at bottom is the 
chief secret of it? What but that one's own life 
have in it great depth and abundance of joy. It 
is certainly a poor way to make others happy by 
making one's self miserable. Small joy we shall 
ever give to others, if we be incapable of joy our- 
selves. Browning has said this well in the follow- 
ing lines: 

"Just as I cannot, till myself convinced, 
Impart conviction, so to deal forth joy 
Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself. 
Renounce joy for my fellows' sake? That's joy 
Beyond joy; but renounced for mine not theirs? 
Why, the physician called to help the sick. 
Let me first of all discard my health! 
No, Son, the richness hearted in such joy 
Is in knowing what are the gifts we give. 
Not in a vain endeavor not to know. 
Therefore desire joy and thank God for it." 

Still farther might the poet have gone with his 
message and said: " Cultivate joy, that you may be 
able to impart it to other lives." So it was that 
Jesus made life a joy for those who became his 
disciples. We call him '' a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." But there was acquaint- 



FOR OTHERS' SAKE. 121 

ance which he had with joy no less great and full. 
He speaks of joy which was peculiarly his own; 
prayed that his disciples might have it fulfilled 
in them. The fullness of their joy, he said, was to 
be that his joy should be in them. And so it is 
that we are to give joy to other lives; not by re- 
nouncing our own for others' sake, but by so delight- 
ing ourselves in things which are truest and best 
that our joy shall be deep and abundant. And in 
like manner must be all our living for the service 
of others. It is according as we make the most of 
ourselves that we ever shall be able to do our utmost 
for the helping and making of others. What does 
any man's offer of service to others amount to when 
there is little or nothing to the man, when he will 
not take pains to be much of anything in his own 
life and character. Sacrifice to be true, to be of 
worth, must be the giving of one's life at its best. 
'' If I were twenty, " said a distinguished publicist, 
" and had but ten years to live, I would spend the 
first nine years accumulating knowledge and get- 
ting ready for the tenth." So did the Son of man, 
who had but thirty-three years to live, spend the 
first thirty of them in secluded self-cultivation, 
getting ready for the three years of service in public. 
And as he calls us to a life that is to be service of 
others after the example of his own, let us clearly 
and fully understand this: it means call to us to 
make the most of ourselves, that the service we do 
others may amount to the most. It means the 
saving of ourselves, that we may be of some use 



122 SELF-CULTIVATION. 

for the saving of others. It means taking all pains 
to be good ourselves that we may be of some good 
to our fellow men. It means self-cultivation, the 
husbanding of all our personal capacities and 
powers, that the sacrifices we make of ourselves for 
others' sake may be of worth and avail. It means 
the sanctifying of ourselves, that others, also, may 
be sanctified by means of us. 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

If thou he the Son of God, come down from the cross. 

If he he the King of Israel, let him now come down 
from the cross, and we will helieve him. — Matt. 27: 
40, 42. 

It was the thought of many hearts on that 
memorable Friday, when darkness shut down at 
noonday over the closing acts of tragedy, so 
supreme and sublime. The language in which it 
had voice was mostly that of mockery and scorn. 
The passing crowd, with wagging heads and swag- 
gering steps, flung it out in rough, heartless jest- 
ing. ''Son of God, are you? Then come down 
from the cross!" By scribes, Pharisees, rulers, it 
was spoken in tones of taunting defiance. ''He, 
the King of Israel? Now is his chance to prove it 
to us, by coming down from the cross." Two there 
were, whose speaking of it was in far more desper- 
ate earnest — the two hanging on crosses to the 
right and to the left of the crucified Nazarene. 
"Save thyself and us, if thou be the Christ," 
madly they begged of him, as drowning men 
grasp at straws. Such were the voices that spoke. 
But in other hearts, quite out of sympathy with 
all this, the like thought, we doubt not, was there, 
though unspoken. All His acquaintance and the 
women who followed Him from Galilee standing 



124 - DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

afar off beholding, what were they thinking? 
That little group, within ear-shot of the cross, 
what would be passing in their minds, as those 
awful hours dragged slowly by? There was John, 
best beloved of the twelve, who had learned from 
their Lord, among other things, the secret of 
prayer, what must His prayer have been, at least 
till the last pathetic commission of His Master 
was spoken to Him from the cross! And Mary, 
the Mother of Jesus, whose soul the sword was 
then piercing quite through, she who at the mar- 
riage in Cana of Galilee had expected Him to 
show forth His glory and was not disappointed, 
she whose hopes in her Son had never come short, 
what hope must have lived on in her mother's 
heart, steadying, sustaining her amid anguish so 
crushing. For, as Marcus Dodds has so appro- 
priately said: ''Hers was not a hysterical, noisy 
sorrow, but quiet and silent. There was nothing 
wild, nothing extravagant in it. There was no 
outcry, no fainting, no wild gesture, nothing to 
show that she was the exceptional mourner and 
that there was no sorrow like unto her sorrow. 
She saw His head lifted in anguish and falling on 
His breast in weakness, and she could not gently 
take it in her hands and wipe the sweat of death 
from His brow. She saw His pierced hands and 
feet become numb and livid, and might not chafe 
them. She saw Him gasp with pain as cramp 
seized part after part of His outstretched body 
and she could not change His posture, nor give 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 125 

liberty to so much as one of his hands. She had 
to suffer this in profound desolation of spirit. Her 
life seemed to be buried at the cross. To 
the mourning there often seems nothing left but 
to die with the dying. What significance, what 
motive can life have any more. None had been 
blessed with such love as Mary's. None could 
know as she knew the depth of Jesus' goodness, 
the unfathomable and unconquerable love He had 
for all. She knew there was none like Him, that 
if any could have brought blessing to the earth it 
was He, and there she saw Him nailed to the 
cross." Must it not be that she was still clinging 
fondly to the hope that there, again. He would 
manifest forth His glory as He had done at Cana, 
upon the hill brow at Nazareth, by the tomb of 
Lazarus at Bethany, and would come down from 
the cross to the utter defeat of his foes? Only 
when she heard Him speak to her His parting 
message, "Woman, behold thy Son," can we 
think that she quite gave it up. For it is the feel- 
ing which has so often come uppermost with us 
ourselves, as we have called to mind the scene of 
our Lord's crucifixion and lingered before it. If 
only, then and there. He had taken His power to 
Himself; if He had but turned the hill of Cal- 
vary into another mount of transfiguration; had He 
come down from the cross, thus making it manifest 
that neither Pilate nor Herod nor Annas, that not 
Death itself had any power against Him, what a 
triumph it would have been of right over wrong, 



126 DESCENT FROM TEE CROSS, 

of truth over error, of good will toward nien over 
inhumanity and hate, of God's kingdom on earth 
over powers of darkness and disorder! Is not this 
a feeling which is familiar to us all? Whether it 
has grown out of resistance on our part to the 
claims of Christ upon us, or out of the intensity 
of our drawing and attachment to Him, we know 
something of what it is to feel so. Personally it 
is what comes up in my remembrance as the ear- 
liest deep impression made upon me by the New 
Testament accounts of our Lord's crucifixion. As 
I heard them read in church and at family wor- 
ship, as mother told them to us Sunday after- 
noons, as I came to read them for myself, I was 
eager in taking up the cry, ''If thou be the Son of 
God come down from the cross." Not by way of 
siding with those who said so to mock and defy 
Him ; but as prompted by the powerful hold which 
personally He had taken upon me. The impulse 
of it was friendly. A childish impulse you may 
call it; but are not many of our best impulses the 
ones that persist with us on from our childhood into 
maturer life? And this impulse to borrow from 
the enemies of our Lord expression for our friend- 
ship and loyalty to Him has something very per- 
sistent about it. ''If thou be the Son of God 
come down from the cross." 

What is more, from His own words it is to be 
understood that it was quite within His power so 
to do. " No man taketh my life from me," He 
said, " but I lay it down of myself. I have power 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 127 

to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." 
At his betrayal in the garden, he gave himself up 
to arrest, well aware that he had but to ask it of 
His Father to bring the hosts of heaven at once 
to His rescue. Being the Son of God, as He certi- 
fied to the high priest He was. He might have come 
down from the cross. That He did not was not 
because He could not. He endured the cross to 
the end, despising the shame of it, not from the 
forcing of it upon Him by any, but from His own 
taking of it to himself. He tasted death not as a 
cup that was pressed to His lips by some irre- 
sistible hand; He could have put it from Him as 
He did the cup of drugged wine offered Him as 
He hung on the cross. The very language of His 
prayer in Gethsemane reveals His consciousness 
of this, " If this cup may not pass from me, except 
I drink it." Whoever it might be that had poured 
out the cup, whoever had put such depth and in- 
tensity of bitterness in it, the drinking of it would 
be an act of His own, free, uncompelled. Was it 
not that, for one thing, which made Gethsemane 
an agony for Him, so intense, so extreme? He was 
facing a death most cruel, most shameful, not as 
one faces the inevitable, but as the supremest 
responsibility is faced. Such are the crises of life 
in which conscientious souls are most sorely tried, 
are wrung with severest anguish. Not when 
suffering must be borne, when even death must 
be met and there is no alternative, but when it 
rests with the person himself whether he will take 



128 DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

the suffering, make the self-sacrifice or avoid it by 
some way still open to him. This, in part, was the 
agony of Jesus which crushed Him to the earth 
and caused Him to sweat as it were great drops of 
blood, out under shadow of the night and the gray 
olive trees. The cup of self-sacrifice to the full 
was at hand for His drinking. In all the bitter- 
ness of it as suffering of just for the unjust, as the 
sinless offering himself for the sinful, it was min- 
gled and poured out. There remained only His 
own taking of it, putting it to His lips, draining 
it to the dregs. In large part that was the cross; 
His own choice, as sinless Son of man to suffer for 
sinful humanity, His own choice, as Son of God 
to die for the ungodly. What He might have done 
there upon Calvary, when the words of railing at 
Him by His foes came so near to the prayer lying 
unspoken in the hearts of His friends, was more 
than hinted beforehand in the garden, when in full 
seff composure he faced His captors, and said, " I 
am He." At once they went backward and fell to 
the ground. 

To show Himself the Son of God by coming 
down from the cross was well within His power, 
had He chosen. But not so did He choose. Why 
not? Because He had something greater, some- 
thing diviner to do; because there was a showing 
of himself the Son of God, and a showing of God 
as the Father, more unmistakable, more conclu- 
sive. Had Jesus descended from the cross in 
answer to outspoken defiance of His foes and un- 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 129 

spoken longing of His friends, it would have been 
a glorious manifestation. There would have been 
a fine poetic justice about it. For the time it 
would have been signal victory of goodness and 
right over baseness, malice and inhuman wrong. 
But it would have been one of those victories 
from which reaction sooner or later is certain to 
follow, a victory which leaves the real warfare 
still waging, the real enemy still unsubdued. Had 
Jesus shown himself the Son of God by coming 
down from the cross to the utter rout of Jews and 
Romans together, there would have been in it a 
certain intense satisfaction to all lovers of justice, 
to all who have any sympathy with goodness; 
but it would be satisfaction leaving still unsatis- 
fied what is deepest in the nature and need of our 
human souls. Mere poetic justice is not a long 
enough line to sound the depths of man's moral 
nature. The greatest poets are themselves the 
best of witnesses to this fact. The masters of 
tragedy, ^schylus and Sophocles, have had glimpses 
of it and made it their message. And chief of them 
all, our own English Shakespeare, in his Hamlet, 
Othello, King Lear, has, to use his own fine phrase, 
so held the mirror up to nature, as to discover in 
human action and experience, depths of moral dis- 
ease, of spiritual disorder, not to be reached by what 
is known as simply poetic justice. For that which 
the masters of tragedy thus exhibit, the tragedy 
of the cross, acted through to the end, is solution. 
The problem of evil in human life is old as history, 



130 DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

as antiquest human tradition, and is new with 
each fresh generation. Keys to it have been 
searched for in every nook and corner of human 
inquiry and effort. But anything hke solution of 
it has been reached only by this one key to it, 
given in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That 
sacrifice of himself, the sinless for the sinful, not 
stopping short of the utmost length to which sacri- 
fice can go, — there is solution for the problem of 
evil, not by way of explaining the evil so much as 
by taking it away. Sacrifices there had been by 
sinful men for their own evil doing, in every con- 
ceivable form, even to giving the fruit of their body 
for the sin of their soul. But all that was no healing 
of the disease, at any rate was healing it but 
slightly. It takes more than sacrifice of ours for 
ourselves to cure us of evil. Only the divine self- 
sacrifice for us is equal to that. And the divine 
self-sacrifice for our human sin is what Jesus our 
Lord manifested, realized, ministered to the full, 
when He did not come down from the cross, but 
endured it to the end. The one power belonging 
to God himself by which even He is able to save 
us altogether from our sins is His love. That His 
love for us is such, that God himself in His own 
being and character is such love. He has certified, 
has put to all possible proof in the cross of His 
Son Jesus Christ. Would it have been showing 
himself Son of God, had Jesus come down from the 
cross? It was a far greater showing of it that He 
kept on with the sacrifice of the cross till He had 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 131 

tasted death for every man. Not even His resur- 
rection was a clearer showing of his Divine Son- 
ship. ''By the resurrection," says Paul, ''He was 
declared to be the Son of God in power. But by the 
cross was He declared to be the Son of God in 
love." Keenly satisfying, then, as it might have 
been had He descended from the cross, to the dis- 
may of His foes and the delight of His friends, 
there is satisfaction far deeper for us all to find 
in friendship with him, in that He did not choose 
so to do, but, loving His own, loved them to the 
end, that He endured the cross, despising the 
shame, for the joy of making known and minister- 
ing to men the love of His Father and theirs. 

One other thing; because Jesus our Lord did 
not come down from the cross, as His enemies 
openly challenged and His disciples secretly 
prayed He would do, we are not left to meet the 
last enemy alone. One aspect of death which 
makes it so dreaded is the awful loneliness of it. 
In everything else we can have the company of 
our friends, if we show ourselves friendly. In the 
blessings and joys of our life there is place for com- 
panionship, to enlarge the blessing and help the joy. 
When trials and sorrows come there is friendship 
deep enough, firm enough to be strongly sustain- 
ing, to be of exceeding great comfort. There is the 
brother who is "born for adversity," as the proverb 
has it. Even in severest sickness our best friends 
can be so much company for us. But when it 
comes to the gates of death there is the parting of 



132 DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

company. None are near enough akin, nor wedded 
to each other closely enough to be companions in 
making that passage. Though they might say, 
*'Let us die together and meet death with clasped 
hands," there would still be the loneliness of it 
for each. There is but one companion who can go 
on with us when the shadows of death must be 
entered. It is He who did not turn back when, of 
His own accord. He came to the gate of it, who did 
not come down from the cross, though it lay in 
His power. He is the friend who sticketh closer 
than a brother, for one thing because He keeps 
company with His friends through the valley of 
shadows, on to the house of His Father and theirs. 
It is thus that He robs death of its terrors. And 
what other way has anything of reality to it? 
We try to hide from our sight the grim aspects of 
death. We speak of it in flowery figures as we 
cover coffins and graves with profusion of flowers. 
We say there is no such thing. We disguise it to 
ourselves and to others in terms of more desirable 
life. But in spite of us the dread features of it 
will show themselves at times through all our dis- 
guisings. The awful loneliness of it comes over us. 
The very fragrance of the flowers which we load 
upon it brings us shuddering and shrinking from 
it. One victory there is over death which is real 
and complete. It is companionship with Him who 
alone does not part company with those who walk 
with Him when death's gate is reached. This He 
is able to do because He himself overcame the 



DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 133 

sharpness of death, because He did not come down 
from the cross, but by the suffering of it laid down 
His life to take it again. To walk with Him, in 
newness of life, is to have companionship through 
the awful loneliness of death itself into the glorious 
company of His own and our own life in the life 
evermore. 

So it is that we commemorate Him as our 
Saviour and Lord. We do show His death till He 
come. For the sufferings of that is He crowned 
with glory and honor. He showed himself the Son 
of God not by coming down from the cross before 
death had passed upon Him, but by entering into 
the very citadel of death by means of the cross 
and putting the last enemy under His feet. In- 
stead of such descent from the cross there is 
that so imperishably pictured in Rubens' renowned 
altarpiece in the Antwerp Cathedral. Over the 
crossbeams above, the strong arms of men lower 
the lifeless body in its winding sheet to the tender 
hands of the women below. What has been said 
of it by way of criticism is the exceeding truth of 
it, is really the highest possible praise. ''The body 
of Jesus is not that of a God which is to rise again 
the third day; it is the remains of a man, in which 
the flame of life has ceased to burn.'' Is it not 
just this by which Jesus bade His disciples always 
keep Him in remembrance; that as Son of man 
He poured out his soul unto actual death, that 
His descent from the cross was not in super- 
human display, but in sharing to the full with our 



134 DESCENT FROM THE CROSS. 

humanity what happens alike to all men. More 
needful and blessed for us such coming down from 
the cross, than what His crucifiers challenged Him 
to do, glorious as that might have been. It is for 
each of our lives to be as the garden of Joseph, a 
place for the body of Jesus reverently, tenderly to 
be laid away, in its turn to become the place of 
His resurrection, the witness of His taking again 
the life that for us He laid down. The temptation 
is great to-day, as it was centuries ago, to ask of 
Christianity that it dispense with the cross. It is 
still the challenge of such as oppose it: "Come 
down from the cross and we will believe you." It 
is still the longing of many who are kindly disposed 
toward Christ and His teaching. How beautiful, 
how welcome His gospel would be if only the cross 
could be eliminated from it. But the mistake of 
that desire is as great now as it was then. The 
gospel of Christ has its fitness and worth as a mes- 
sage for humanity to-day because it is preaching of 
the cross. The name of Jesus, to-day and forever, 
is above every name, is the name to be most firmly 
believed in, most devoutly remembered, most 
lovingly cherished and confessed, most obediently 
honored, because when that bitter cup of death 
for our sin was mingled and poured out for Him, 
He did not put it aside; when in sufferings im- 
measurable the iniquity of us all was made to 
meet upon him, — He did not come down from the 
cross. 



CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; ITS SCOPE 
AND ITS SECRET. 

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their 
strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; 
they shall run and not he weary; they shall walk and 
not faint. — Is. 40 : 31. 

The distinguished Scotch scholar, George Adam 
Smith, has brought fresh light upon this familiar 
verse of the Bible. He first raises the question 
as to whether the order of thought is correct. 
Mount up with wings, — run, — walk. That does 
not look very much like progress. It seems rather 
the reverse of it. Instead of strength renewed, 
it looks more like strength giving out. From 
flying to running, from running to walking, is not 
that a sinking rather than a rising scale? What 
is there promising and hopeful to that? Is it not 
a clear sign of weakening, rather than renewing 
of strength? It is in his answering such questions 
that Dr. Smith is especially suggestive. He shows 
this to be after all the proper order of thought, ''a 
natural and true climax rising from the easier to 
the more difficult, from the ideal to the real, from 
dream to duty, from what can be only the rare 
occasions of life to what must be life's usual and 
abiding experience." He shows it from the history 
of Israel as they came back from Babylon to the 



136 CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; 

land of their fathers. There was first ''the great 
flight of hope, on which we see them rising in their 
psalms of redemption as on the wings of an eagle"; 
next a ''rush at the return; and then the long 
tramp, day after day, with the slow caravan, at the 
pace of its most heavily laden beasts of burden, 
when they shall walk and not faint should indeed 
seem to them the sweetest part of their God's 
promise." Again was the same order followed in 
the earliest Christian history. The strength of 
the Apostles, and of the Church in their time, 
appears in the sublime faith with which they 
mounted up as upon eagles' wings, then in the swift 
speed with which they ran forth on their great 
gospel mission, but more than all in the steady, 
untiring persistence with which they traveled on 
along the beaten highways of the world, and with- 
out faltering or fainting carried out the teachings 
of their Lord in the common walks of life. "And 
so must it ever be," says Dr. Smith, "first the ideal, 
and then the rush at it with passionate eyes, and 
then the daily trudge onward, when its splendor 
has faded from the view, but is all the more closely 
wrapped round the heart. For, glorious as it is to 
rise to some great consummation on wings of dreams 
and song, glorious as it is, also, to bend that impetus 
a little lower and take some practical crisis by 
storm, an even greater proof of our religion and of 
the help our God can give us, is the life-long tramp 
along earth's common surface, without fresh wings 
of dream, or the excitement of rivalry, or the attra,c- 



ITS SCOPE AND ITS SECRET. 137 

tion of reward, but with the head cool, and the 
face forward, and every footfall upon firm ground. 
Let hope rejoice in a promise which does not go off 
into the air, but leaves us upon solid earth; let us 
hold to a religion, which while it exults in being 
the secret of enthusiasm and the inspiration of 
heroism, is daring and divine enough to find its 
climax in the commonplace." 

With this light upon the words of the prophet 
before us, let us dwell upon them for a little, as 
they set forth to us our Christian strength, its 
scope and its secret: "But they that wait upon the 
Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount 
up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be 
weary; they shall walk and not faint." 

A chief element of strength which Christianity 
has always put into human life is in the purity and 
height of its ideals. It is one clear mark in the 
teaching of Jesus which is missing almost every- 
where else. He sets the ideal of human life the 
very highest it possibly can be, and he holds it 
there throughout. He never blinks it in the 
slightest, never allows any letting down from it, 
or any accommodation of it to prevailing ideas or 
imperfect conditions of men. In his approach to 
men with their spiritual ignorance and moral 
obtuseness, Christ did adapt his forms of speech 
and methods of work to the case as it was. But 
nowhere did he ever drop down from the supreme 
height of his spiritual and moral ideal to something 
that should seem easier and more feasible for weak 



138 CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; 

and imperfect men. Jesus Christ never said to 
any person, this truth which I declare to you is the 
ideal of human life, but because of your blindness 
or weakness you will have to live for the time as if 
something else were the truth. To some extent, 
he said, even Moses had accommodated the ideal 
of his teaching to human imperfection and weak- 
ness. For the hardness of their heart, Moses had 
given the people a divorce law considerably below 
the ideal. But Jesus Christ set forth the ideal of 
marriage once more at the clearest, the purest, the 
highest. Divorce for the one sin alone which 
nullifies marriage, and that only to the person 
sinned against, never to one who is guilty of the 
sin; does that seem, to-day, too high and severe and 
ideal for this free country of ours, where so many 
things are liable to come in between husband and 
wife to divide them in their sympathies and tastes 
and make their marriage practically void? Then 
how must it have appeared in his own time, when 
divorce was so easy even among the Jews, when 
the prevailing ideas of marriage, especially in the 
great Gentile world were so exceedingly lax? But 
in an age of low standards and loose practices as 
to marriage and divorce, Jesus held up and enforced 
the one highest, and the most severe ideal, without 
a hint that anything short of that was allowable 
for any. And this is simply a specimen instance. 
It is so that Christ made use of the ideal upon 
every side of human life. Was love his ideal for 
man in relation to his fellows? He did not, like 



ITS SCOPE AND ITS SECRET. 139 

the Rabbis, drop down from that to a working of 
love in practical life which allows a man to hate 
his enemies. Love as an ideal, with him, meant 
in practical life, — *' Love your enemies." The ideal 
with him was always the highest. And it was, at 
the same time, always the truth, to go directly at 
work with, as a matter of actual living. It is what 
he himself did with the ideal in his own life, as 
Son of man. He lived his own pure and perfect 
ideals. He went straight into action with them, 
and made them matters of conduct and character. 
And it is what he taught other men to do with the 
same pure and perfect ideals. As he set for men 
the pattern of manhood, at the very loftiest level, 
he did not say to them: '' Now that is a long way 
above you. You cannot expect to come very near 
to it. But do your best and you will make at 
least some little approach toward it." Rather did 
he say, as he gave to men his perfect ideal of all 
that is human, " Take it as truth to go into action 
with at once. It is for you to work with, not simply 
to work toward. It is what you are to live out, 
rather than to live up to." And there is the 
strength of Christianity, as regards the ideal. All 
the power that lies in having an ideal, the very high- 
est and purest, belongs to it. But the strength of 
it is more than that. It has also the power which 
lies in having the ideal as the direct and actual 
working force. That is new birth from above. 
That is true inspiration. That is the strength 
with which a man mounts up with wings as an 



140 CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; 

eagle. Without that, the ideal, by its very purity 
and height, gives one despair, rather than courage 
and hope. It is high as heaven. It is far above 
xne. What use in my striving after what I cannot 
expect to reach. I might as well think to fly with- 
out wings. But the ideal of our human life as it 
is given us in the teaching, the example, the minis- 
try of our Lord Jesus Christ, does not put us in 
any such case. It is not our despair, but our 
inspiration and hope; because the ideal itself, high 
and perfect as it is, is the very truth which we 
are to proceed with and act on at once. The 
ideal in Christ is what we have not so much to 
live up to, as to live up on. So the strength it 
gives us is, as it were, wings with which to mount 
up like eagles. How is it that the eagle is able to 
rise up so high in the heavens and be sustained there 
hour after hour, apparently as much at ease as 
if upon a nest of down. The whole secret of it 
is not yet known as a matter of mechanics. But 
this much of it is an open secret, the eagle mounts 
up into the air, by committing himself to the air 
and beginning to act upon it down where it comes 
nearest to the earth. The air itself is what the 
eagle has to work with for rising up into its sub- 
limest heights. And it is like that with the ideal 
of our human life as given us in Christ. It is by 
committing ourselves to it and beginning to work 
with it as a spirit of life down here, where we are, 
that we mount up into it and rise to its heights. 
Inseparable from the ideal of Christ is the spirit of 



ITS SCOPE AND ITS SECRET. 141 

Christ. Our upreaching after likeness with him 
brings his uplifting of us into likeness with him. 
Our aspiring toward him brings his inspiring of 
us. This, first of all, is what makes Christianity 
so strong. This is a chief element of the strength 
which it puts into human life. It summons men 
to the loftiest ideals of life; and at the same time 
makes those very ideals serve as spirit to quicken, 
as basis to act on, for mounting up into them. 
There is no tyranny of the ideal in the kingdom of 
God. Rather is there full freedom for every man in 
it by the commitment of himself to its one perfect 
ideal. So is the all holy Son of man, not the despair 
of sinful humanity but its glorious hope, its one 
true inspiration, its complete renewal of strength. 
Another element of strength which Christianity 
puts into human life is its directness and swiftness 
of motive. ''They shall run and not be weary." 
It is a well-known fact in the field of mechanics 
that there is always a great waste of force when it 
cannot be directly and quickly applied. This is 
one advantage in the force of gravity wherever 
it can be used, — its action is direct and ready. 
The great outcry of the mechanical spirit against 
the steam engine, is that it wastes ten times as 
much force as it uses. If only some direct way 
could be found to set free the force that there is in 
a ton of coal, without having to go so far around, 
literally through fire and water, by means of fur- 
nace and boiler, engine and dynamo, what a world 
of saving there would be! What a blessing to the 



142 CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; 

world will be the genius who can make that dis- 
covery! Something like that is what Christianity 
does for human life in the matter of its motives. 
Christ summed up all motives of human duty in 
the single word ''love." But that was not all. 
That had been done before. The law of Moses 
had said, '' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself." But 
Jesus Christ set free that twofold force of love as 
the motive bearing singly and directly upon human 
life. In him love of God and of fellow man move 
upon us as one direct, swift appeal in which no 
fraction or moral or spiritual force is wasted or 
lost. ''For love of Christ," means for love of 
God and for love of humanity, both in one. To 
do some act "for Christ's sake" is to do it for God's 
sake and at the same time for humanity's sake. 
And what motive so direct, so swift, so free in its 
promptings to life as this! If ever feet of man can 
run untiring upon any path of life, and weariness 
be shaken off from them that their speed slacken 
not, it is when love is the motive prompting them 
to it. For love of country, how tired soldiers have 
been able to forget they were tired in their eagerness 
to charge and carry the enemies' works. For love 
of wife and children, how many a man, to-day, is 
keeping on unwearied in the hot rush of business, 
or at least without stopping to ask himself whether 
he is tired. Let a man come home wearied from 
his day's work, to find his only child taken suddenly 
Very sick and how ready, how swift he will be to 



ITS SCOPE AND ITS SECRET. 143 

run for the doctor. What race of life can so weary 
a man, but that love coming in as a motive will be 
refreshment for him and renewing of strength? 
And it is the same when our Christian calling is so 
to run that we may obtain. Love of Christ is the 
motive for it, all direct and all embracing. In that 
is renewing of strength, that we may ''run and not 
be weary." 

Once more; the strength of Christianity is in its 
staying quality for the common paths and slower 
steps of life; "And they shall walk and not faint.'' 
Is not this truly the most promising and blessed 
part of the Christian message to us? For every 
human life has in it far more of the commonplace 
than of anything else. ''The great days of the 
year," as one has said, "are few. And the matter 
of all common days is made up of ordinary and 
stale transactions. Scarcely once a year does 
anything really remarkable befall us. With the 
exception of some few striking passages or great 
and critical occasions perhaps not more than five 
or six in all, our life is made up of common things." 
If the strength of any person's life belonged only 
to its great occasions, then there would be all to- 
gether very little of it; for its great occasions are 
so small a fraction of any human life. Were it 
only when we have some flight to take, or some 
swift run to make, that there was renewal of strength 
for us, then life through far the greater measure of 
it must be weariness to us. Along most of its 
road we must make weak and fainting work of it. 



144 CHRISTIAN STRENGTH; 

For most of its road has to be traversed at walking 
pace. And here is where the gospel of Christ 
makes full proof of itself. It is the redeeroing of 
our human life throughout ; of what is commonplace 
in it, as well as of what is more remarkable and rare. 
Christ came into this human life of ours, not to 
free it from routine and commonplace, but to 
make it free within the very routine and common- 
place of it. His mission was to convert life for 
us, not so that it should be all flight, or running, 
and not walking any more; but so that in the 
walking, as well as the running, and the flight of 
it, there should be both freedom and strength. 
"I pray not that thou shouldest take them out 
of the world," said Jesus of his disciples. A true 
Christian life is not all inspired uplift of soul; or 
spirited rush into heroic action; it is, also, and in 
very large part, the solid stepping of a godly walk. 
So it was with the life of Jesus himself. There 
was one short shining night of transfiguration; 
there were years upon years of plodding carpenter 
work. There were miracles of mercy wrought 
instantly by his hand, but for every one of them 
there were days upon days of the commonplace 
touched into Christly quality and strength. And 
so he calls us to be his disciples that we may have 
the Christly quality and strength in our daily 
walk among commonplace things, as well as in 
up-lift of soul and promptness for service. In 
him is the renewal of our strength, that we may 
"mount up with wings," that we may ''run and 



ITS SCOPE AND ITS SECRET. 145 

not be weary/' and, crowning it all, that we may 
''walk and not faint." 

And the secret of it all on our part? Simply 
that we wait upon God, as both in word and in 
life Jesus himself has so well taught us how. He has 
so made God known to us that we can altogether 
trust him. In all things he leads us in the way of 
God's will. If gladly we give ourselves to be so 
led of him, it will be the renewing of our strength 
and we shall mount up with wings as eagles, shall 
run and not be weary, shall walk and not faint. 



10 



THE UNTOLD RESOURCES OF 
FAITH. 

If it were not so I would have told you. — John 14 : 2. 

This is a saying of Jesus which will bear being 
taken out of its immediate connection; for the 
principle underlying it is of very wide application. 
It is a saying which greatly extends for us the 
boundaries of our Christian faith, and maps out 
its field on a much larger scale than we are often 
in the habit of thinking. 

That we may be entirely sure of whatever we 
find distinctly and positively stated in the teaching 
of our Lord is a commonplace, is well nigh an axiom 
of our believing in him. What we have his word 
for, directly and clearly, we can depend on as being 
the truth. His ''Verily, verily I say unto you," 
with reference to anything, settles that thing for 
us, if we are really believers in him. So surely it 
must be, or our faith in him goes for little or nothing. 
It is the very least we can do, if we call him Master 
and Lord. It is small faith that we have in any 
person if we are not able to take his word when he 
gives it to us most clearly stated, most solemnly 
pledged. Unless we can depend on what is told 
us by one whom we hold as a friend, our confidence 
in him is certainly meagre and of very little worth. 
It is eminently so of our faith in Christ as Saviour 



UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 147 

and Lord of our lives. If we believe in him at 
all his word clearly spoken, sacredly given, must be 
for us the truth on which we can surely put 
our dependence. That is the narrowest boundary 
which can be set for Christian faith, if there be 
any real faith about it. And it is the way in which 
a good many people bound for themselves the 
field of faith. They make their map of it entirely 
from the words of Christ as recorded in the gospels. 
What our Lord stated in his teaching so clearly that 
there can be no mistake about it; what he promised 
in unmistakable terms, are the basis and body of 
their Christian believing. These are the limits 
within which they hold and exercise their faith 
as disciples of Christ. 

Now this in itself is much. It is a very consid- 
erable and very excellent part of that faith in God 
and in himself to which Jesus summons us by his 
gospel message. To take him at his word, to be 
sure that he tells us the truth in all that he declares 
to us of God, and our own human life, to rest as- 
sured of the good things which he promises us on 
definite terms, that is a good deal. All that is 
well, so far as it goes. Only that is not by any 
means all. The field for our Christian believing is 
far larger than that. It cannot be enclosed within 
any such limits. That is merely a sectional map 
of it. The whole area of it is very much greater. 
For there is a faith that is larger, that is more vital 
and Christian than simply taking the Lord at his 
word in all that he tells us. It is such trust in 



148 UNTOLD HESOURCES OF FAITH, 

Christ himself, that we are sure of him when he 
keeps silence, no less than when he speaks plainly. 
Our common experience with people is witness to 
us of this. It is not the person in whom we have 
surest confidence, whose word we insist upon hav- 
ing, from whom we exact a definite promise. It is 
always a sign that our faith in someone is rather 
uncertain, is somehow lacking, when we put one 
under oath in order to believe what one says. 
There are people in whom we have just enough 
faith so that we will take their word wherever they 
give it; we feel safe in depending upon them for 
whatever they certify to us, or promise us in so 
many words. But that is not the limit of con- 
fidence between man and man. There is a still 
fuller measure and finer quality of it among the 
closest of friends. A few people there are in whom 
we have such entire and implicit faith that it does 
not make us really any more sure of them to have 
them tell us or promise us something. We trust 
them in their silences as well as in their utterances. 
We can depend on them for what they do not speak 
of to us, as well as for what they tell us all about. 
Gladly we take the word of such a person, whenever 
there is occasion. But more to us than any word 
or all words of his is the man himself, in person and 
in character so worthy of our trust. 

Like this, only in a still deeper and more vital 
way, is the faith that we should have in Christ our 
Lord and through him in God our Father. It is 
more than taking him at his word, confident that 



UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 149 

all he tells us is surely so. It is trusting him in 
person; as one whose character and relation to us 
make us sure of him in things whereof he does not 
speak, as well as in things whereof he speaks most 
plainly. Not only may we depend on the truth of 
what he tells us, but there is truth upon which we 
may depend because he has not told us otherwise, 
"If it were not so I would have told you." The 
silences of Jesus are to be trusted as well as his 
utterances. There is faith for us to have, when, 
as in the presence of Pilate he gave no answer, not 
even so much as one word; or as when in the pres- 
ence of those sent to take him, never man spake as 
he. For it is the man himself whom we have to 
believe in, more and greater than any and all words 
even of his own. 

Is it not clear, then, how greatly this enlarges for 
us the field of our Christian faith? For, great as 
the words are which our Lord has spoken to us as 
to God and our duty and the life eternal, there 
are many matters and weighty about which he has 
given us no word at all. If only he had told us 
about them, we should know just what to believe. 
With all of our human questionings, the highest and 
deepest to which Christ makes answer so fully 
by the words of his gospel, there are other question- 
ings of ours to which his only answer is silence. 
Some of them may be idle questions, without spir- 
itual purpose and earnestness, as when Herod 
questioned him with many words and Jesus 
answered him nothing. But there are other ques- 



150 UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 

tions which we ask in all earnestness, from out the 
devoutest depths of our heart, to find that silence 
is the only answer to them from Christ our Teacher 
and our Lord. It was such a case with those first 
disciples, which gave occasion for the saying of our 
text. It was nothing idle or unspiritual that was 
weighing upon their minds; it was one of the most 
solemn and weighty of all matters pertaining to our 
human life. The dearest friend they had on earth 
was saying his last farewells to them. He had 
just been telling them how short a time he would 
still be with them before he would go whither they 
could not follow him, till long afterwards. And 
their questions were the old and ever new ones as 
to the whereabouts of that undiscovered country, 
the whats and hows and whys with reference to 
it. Whither goest thou? Why cannot we go with 
thee? It was that chapter in human life when men 
are most thoroughly in earnest, when the heart is 
wrung with most anxious questionings, when its 
troubling is most keen and real. What help had 
Christ to bring them in so great trouble? Not 
words, but himself. '' Believe also in me." And 
it was his silence more than anything he had been 
saying by which he appealed to them for confidence. 
''If it were not so I would have told you.'^ The 
things which were troubling them they might well 
take for granted. The very fact that he had not 
spoken of them at all was assurance for them. The 
greatest thing of all he had told them often, plainly, 
beyond mistake. God is their Father, and through 



UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 151 

Jesus Christ, his Son, has called them to be his 
children. Must not a Father such as he have an 
eternal home for all who become eternally his 
children? Will he leave them homeless orphans 
after he has made them spiritually his sons? What 
need to tell those who have found in God the Father 
who has loved them, even to the sending of his 
Son for their redeeming, that they shall be for- 
ever at home in company with him? The need 
would be to tell them, if it were not so. Home is 
what belongs naturally to a Father. It is a matter 
of course that every true child of his should have a 
place with him. It is something for everyone who 
trusts God and loves him as the eternal Father to 
be sure of, unless some one who knows shall tell 
him otherwise. And he who came forth from the 
Father, to make him known as such to men, gave 
not the slightest hint of anything but that. In 
my Father's house are many mansions, many abid- 
ing places. With God as the ever-living Father 
there is room to make eternally at home, all who 
will be his children. If there be any trouble at 
all about it, may we not depend upon it that Jesus, 
Son of man, and Son of God, would have made it 
known? This is the appeal of our Lord to his own 
silence on the subject, up to this point in the teach- 
ing of his first disciples. If they had faith enough 
in him to believe that the great and eternal things 
he told them were the truth, could they not also 
trust him for the eternal truth of other things of 
which he had not found it needful to say anything? 



152 UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 

Especially when his silence was consent to what 
followed naturally from the words he spoke, is 
there not a confidence to be put in it and a rest 
of soul for his disciples to be getting from it? The 
gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is not 
limited to the messages of truth and love and life 
which fell from his gracious lips. Some of its good 
news is simply no news. It is the way we often 
take things in our common life. No news, many 
times, we accept as good news; especially when it 
is some trusted friend that we are depending on 
in the matter. To anyone in whom we have full 
confidence we are free to say: ''Unless I hear other- 
wise from you, I shall be sure that all is well." 
It is such confidence in him, as nearer and better 
to us than all earthly friends, to which our Lord 
invites us when he says: "If it were not so I would 
have told you." There is gospel for us, the message 
of good news, in his silences as well as in the great 
words, the words of eternal life which he has spoken. 
There are things which we may depend upon, points 
at which we may be sure that all is well, simply 
because we have heard nothing about them from 
him, our most trusty of all friends. 

One of them is akin to what was troubling the 
hearts of those first disciples upon the occasion of 
our text. It has to do with the world to come and 
the life there, of which Christ himself is our promise 
and our hope. Many hearts are troubled with 
questioning about the relation which dearest 
earthly friends are to have with each other in the 



UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH, 153 

heavenly life. Will there be ready and full recog- 
nition? Will there be companionship again on 
any such terms of closeness and endearment as 
have been so precious and helpful here on earth? 
It is something of which our Lord did not speak in 
so many words. He has not told us plainly and 
particularly how that would be. There is no ''Ver- 
ily I say unto you," of his, to set all question at rest. 
Certain sayings of his do very strongly imply it. 
It is the inference which naturally follows from all 
that he taught as to Hfe in the world to come, that 
the closest ties of earth are to be there reunited, 
the most loving of earthly endearments to be there 
fulfilled. But it is left with us to make the in- 
ference. He does not make it for us. He nowhere 
positively declares to us the thing of which we so 
greatly want to be sure. What then? Is it some- 
thing to continue troubled and uncertain about? 
Is it not rather a place for fullest confidence in the 
very silence of our Lord and Saviour? Here, if 
anywhere, the principle must apply: ''If it were 
not so I would have told you." ''Let not your 
heart be troubled" as to that. "Believe in me. 
If it be any mistake to look forward to the knowing 
of our best loved on earth in the heavenly life and of 
companying with them again as part of the eternal 
blessedness of it, I would certainly have warned 
you against such mistake. A thing so readily in- 
ferred from all of my teaching, a thing so natu- 
rally hoped for by the heart that is most deeply 
and devoutly Christian, if that were not so I would 



154 UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 

have told you." It is part of our Christian faith 
to be sure in such a ease, because we know in whom 
we have believed, because our confidence is not 
in words merely, not even the words of our Lord. 
It is Christ himself whom we trust, and his very 
silence is as sure for us as his word. 

One other great matter to which this applies, 
and it is really the greatest of all; it is the sacrifice 
of Christ as our Saviour from sin. Here very 
largely it is the silence of Jesus through which our 
faith lays hold upon him. When it comes to his 
suffering unto death, our Lord had very little to 
say, except to tell how bitter a cup it was and how 
freely he drank it, that he might save humanity 
out of its sin. As a lamb, dumb before its shearers, 
he was led to the sufferings of death. In Geth- 
semane it was only a sentence or two of his prayer 
that the disciples heard. The burden of its agony, 
did not come to their ears. Before the high priest, 
before Pilate and Herod, he kept silence most of 
the time. Through the long hours at Calvary 
there were very few words. The cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ is in very large measure his silence. 
And yet is it not there that we have fullest occasion 
to put our trust in him? Is it not there that our 
confidence in him may be the deepest and surest? 
In that silence of his was the crowning proof of 
his faithfulness to us. 

And this is the faith to which he invites us, that 
we believe not only his word but in his very self; 
that we trust him, not only for the things that he 



UNTOLD RESOURCES OF FAITH. 155 

tells us but for all other things which belong to the 
saving, the enriching, the fulfilling of our life. 
'' Believe in God, believe also in me. If it were not 
so I would have told you." 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 

The word of the Lord came again unto me saying, 
what mean ye that ye use this proverb concerning 
the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten 
sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge? 
As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occa- 
sion any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold 
all souls are mine. As the soul of the Father, so also 
the soul of the son is mine. — Ezek. 18: 1-4. 

To what extent the proverb in question had 
become current in that age, may be judged by the 
fact, that it is cited by both Jeremiah and Eze- 
kiel, each the foremost religious teacher and re- 
former of his time. And they both, alike, cite it 
to protest against it. It was a saying so much in 
everybody's mouth that much mischief was the 
result of its being so generally taken for granted. 
It was proving a serious obstacle in the way of 
movements for reform, such as these great prophets 
were intent upon bringing to pass. Their appeals 
to the people for better things, both in public and 
private life, were blunted in their edge by meeting 
with this proverb at every turn. The fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set 
on edge. The message of God with which they 
were charged, whether it were the bare and direct, 
^Hhus saith the Lord," or were clothed in the 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 157 

imagery of parable or vision, had the force of it 
parried by this popular notion, that the present 
evils were a heritage from the past which could 
not be escaped. It was the " iniquity of the 
fathers'' that was being visited upon them; what 
use in preaching reform to them! What use for 
them to be attempting amendment, or struggling 
for abatement of abuses which had come down to 
them as a legacy from the past. So they took 
refuge in the proverb, as excuse enough for going 
with the drift. The fathers have eaten sour grapes 
and the children's teeth are set on edge. But these 
prophets, each, in his time, got very tired of hearing 
it. Emphatically, solemnly, in God's name they 
entered their protest against the sour grape phil- 
osophy of life. It was not that the proverb was 
altogether false. A certain fraction of truth, even 
of divinely revealed truth, had been clothed out 
and popularized under this picturesque phrasing. 
The mischief of it was precisely there. It was a 
half-truth, held to and accounted, as if it covered 
all the facts in the case. It is true of every gen- 
eration that certain evils from which it suffers have 
come to it, by way of inheritance from foregoing 
generations. That is, it is a part of the truth. 
It is written in the very law by which our human- 
ity is bound together in the bundle of life, that 
each age, for better or for worse, does much in 
setting for the next age its problems to solve. 
This is so vital a fact that account was made of it 
in the ten commandments, that moral core of 



158 AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 

Israel's law which has supplied all after ages with 
a standard of morals. That the iniquities of the 
fathers are visited upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generations, and God's mercy shown 
unto thousands of them that keep his command- 
ments, was part of the truth made manifest in 
that revelation of law; but it was not the whole of 
that truth; it was simply a fraction. Many other 
fractions must be taken along with it to make the 
whole truth. Within its own limits the proverb 
was true. There is a certain '^setting on edge" 
which children's teeth take from the sour grapes 
eaten by their fathers. But to make out of that 
the chief fact of life, to base all notions of duty 
and of conduct upon it, is greatly overworking 
the proverb. And it was just such overworking 
of an adage with some truth in it against which 
these prophets and reformers of old so stoutly 
protested. And the form in which they entered 
their protest is equally, even more specially worthy 
of remark. It is very striking in the words of our 
text. "As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not 
have occasion any more to use this proverb in 
Israel. Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the 
father, so also the soul of the son is mine." The 
half truth is met, not with denial, but by matching 
it with the other half of the truth. The mischief 
done by the overworked proverb is corrected by 
bringing into the foreground other truth, more 
vital still, which in its place requires to be heeded. 
All souls are mine, as the soul of the father, so the 



AN OVEUWOnKBD PROVERB. 159 

soul of the son. If it be a fact that each generation 
inherits something, for better or for worse, from the 
generation preceding, it is a still greater fact that 
each generation stands directly accountable to God 
for the sort of generation it is. Israel in the days 
of Jeremiah, in the days of Ezekiel, was suffering 
from abuses which had come down to them from 
generations before. But Israel in that age as in 
every other were the people of God. To him they 
were directly accountable, not only as a nation 
but as individuals, for the course they were taking, 
for the sort of life they were living. Whatever 
of evils had come down to them from the past, it 
was their present and imperative business, with 
God's help, to be correcting them. Whatever of 
good was their heritage, it was their present busi- 
ness, with God's help, to be improving upon it. 
They were in God's hand for this, as their fathers 
had been before them. The past history of that 
people had not so tied them up to abuse and dis- 
aster but what they were free to make a new his- 
tory for themselves of a very different sort. They 
were not bound by their heritage of evil to go on 
in the same evil courses. There was something 
more binding upon them by far than that — God's 
claim upon them as a people, their relation to 
God, as belonging to him, each soul by itself. 
Here was a fact more vital still, weightier, more 
considerable by far than the other, the fact by 
which, before everything else they were bound. 
''All souls are mine, as the soul of the father so 



160 AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 

also the soul of the son." Every man in his own 
person, directly related and immediately answerable 
to God, is the thing about him of chiefest account. 
All other facts which enter into human life are 
secondary to that. If inheritance from the past 
supplies to each generation certain problems to 
solve, the belonging to God of every soul of man in 
that generation is what supplies the solution for 
all of its problems. The fact of every man's indi- 
vidual relation and direct accountability to God 
has force to it for every generation, so mighty and 
binding that all stress of inherited tendency must 
give way before it. What mean they by this 
proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
and the children's teeth are set on edge. As I 
live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion 
any more to use this proverb. Behold, all souls 
are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul 
of the son." 

And is not the message one which has place to-day 
as well as in that far away time? If we are not so 
much given to speaking in proverbs as were the 
Israelites of old, we often say very much the same 
things in more prosaic form. Where they talked 
about the fathers eating sour grapes and the chil- 
dren's teeth being set on edge, we pack it all into a 
single word and call it heredity. But the meaning 
is precisely the same. And as with Israel of old 
that sour grapes proverb was so far over worked, 
is not the same thing under its modern name, 
being quite as much overworked in our time? The 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 161 

word ''heredity" is getting familiar to us all. It 
passes pretty freely among us. There is something 
rather taking about it. It sounds scientific. We 
find no little satisfaction in being able to use it. 
While we shrink somewhat from speaking about the 
iniquities of the fathers being visited upon the chil- 
dren, we talk freely about heredity, without troub- 
ling ourselves that it means much the same thing. 
While the old-time sour-grape proverb may seem 
to us rather crude and uncouth, the term ''hered- 
ity" suits us exactly, and we use it glibly to say 
the same thing, which of old was voiced by the 
proverb. And is there not as much danger of over- 
working it in the newer form as the older. Not 
but what our modern term, heredity, stands for 
a fact. It is as true to human life in this latest 
age of the world as the sour-grape proverb in the 
days of the prophets, no less and no more. Our 
present day problems of life are shaped for us in no 
small degree by the character and the acts of former 
generations. There are ills enough in the world 
which were handed down from the fathers, as also 
there are blessings not a few. Some things every 
one of us has to suffer in consequence of faults 
and shortcomings of others, before we were born; 
as there are advantages which we all enjoy, from 
the virtues and good deeds of others, before we were 
born. If that is what we mean by heredity, all 
very well. It is true. It is a fact of human life, 
witnessed in the testimony of moral law written 
as by the finger of God on tables of stone, and wit- 
11 



162 AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 

nessed anew in this age by the most scientific 
study of man. But, at that, it is just one fact, to 
be taken alongside of another still greater, weight- 
ier, more vital still. True as it is, it is but part of 
the truth and the less considerable part at that. 
But with the length to which many people carry 
it, it becomes the old sour-grape philosophy of 
EzekiePs time over again. Once more the message 
of God with respect to it is: " What mean ye by this 
proverb?'^ What do we mean by "heredity," 
which has come to be a word so readily current 
amongst us? Do we mean a kind of iron necessity, 
by which a man is bound to evil courses of life as 
the result of evil inheritance, by which inheritance 
of good insures a man virtue in spite of himself? 
Then is it an altogether overworked word. ''As I 
live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion 
any more to use this proverb in Israel." As the 
Lord God still lives in this most enlightened age 
of the world, there is no occasion for us any more 
to use the word heredity in any such sour-grape 
sense. When that's what it means, it does mischief. 
It blocks the wheels of human progress in spiritual 
and moral life. It blunts the appeal of religion and 
of duty. And the form of protest to be raised 
against it now, is the same as in Ezekiel's day. 
What truth there is in it is not to be denied. There 
is no call whatever to dispute that there is a fact 
of human life, very real and very forcible, answer- 
ing to our modern word, heredity. But there is 
reason to insist upon another fact, standing along- 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 163 

side of it, equally real and of still greater force. 
It is the fact so strongly stated in God's word to 
Israel by the mouth of his prophet: ''Behold all 
souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also 
the soul of the son is mine." Whoever our fathers 
on earth may have been, we have everyone of us a 
Father in heaven. And the fatherhood of God 
toward us right here in the present, is of far more 
account to us than any human parentage away back 
in the past. However much it may matter for any 
of us, one way or another, that our ancestors were 
what they were and did as they did, it is a far 
weightier matter for every one of us, to have a son- 
ship from God that is close and direct. Whatever 
resemblances we may have to parents or grandpar- 
ents, or parents still farther back, each one of us, 
in himself and for himself, bears stamped upon him 
the image of God. The place which he gives to 
that in his life, the use that he makes of it, do far 
more to determine the manner of man he is to be 
than all the force of heredity. It was so that Christ 
taught in his gospel of life to the world. This was 
the message sent in advance to prepare the way 
for his teaching: ''Think not to say within your- 
selves, we have Abraham to our Father; for I say 
unto you that God is able of these stones to raise 
up children unto Abraham." To the suggestion 
of his disciples that a certain blind man's misfor- 
tune might be due to some sin of his parents, he 
said: "No, but that the works of God should be 
made manifest in him." And that was the one 



164 AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 

fact about men, whatever their condition or ante- 
cedents, to which our Lord attached more impor- 
tance than to everything else; the rich possibilities 
of manhood for them, by giving God his due place 
in their lives, by living as his children, directly an- 
swerable and freely obedient to him. The supreme 
claim of God, as heavenly Father, upon each soul of 
man, his immediate personal dealing with him, in 
love and in power for his eternal well-being, that, in 
the mind of Jesus, Son of man, is of far more account 
than all that can possibly be covered by the word 
heredity. And it is truth as vital for this genera- 
tion as for any other. It is truth for which this 
age has the utmost of use. The very fact that 
much stress is being laid on the facts of heredity 
is so much more occasion for us to have our eyes 
open, to be giving full weight and force to this still 
greater fact. "As I live saith the Lord God, ye 
shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb : 
Behold all souls are mine, as the soul of the father, 
so also the soul of the son is mine." No person 
is so tied up by inheritance from the past that it 
makes or unmakes him, without choice and act of 
his own. What the person himself chooses to do, 
with a view to God's supreme claim upon him, is 
what makes or unmakes him. No man's heredity 
ever was so bad that he must of necessity be a bad 
man, without his consenting to be. And no man's 
heredity ever was so good that he had to be a good 
man, whether or not. Many a person, of most 
excellent ancestry, with the balance of heredity 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 165 

heavily in his favor, has made utter wreck of his 
hfe. If godly parentage could settle for any one 
what his character is to be, then Aaron Burr would 
have been a saint ; but with saintly men and women 
for his ancestors he made himself infamous by 
blackest wickedness and foulest crime. Many 
another, on a lesser scale, has done and is doing 
the like. On the other hand, not a few people with 
the odds heavily against them on the score of in- 
heritance have been noble men and women in spite 
of it. The evil done by their fathers they disallowed 
to themselves. In many ways the evil inheritance 
has brought suffering upon them. But in their 
very sufferings they have so committed their souls 
unto God as to be chastened and purified by them. 
The inherited hindrance they armed themselves, 
with God's help, to battle against, and so turned 
it into occasion of most glorious moral triumph. 

When the late Dr. Berry of England was in this 
country some years ago, he enforced this truth by 
striking instances coming under his own observa- 
tion. Upon leaving the old home land he bore com- 
missions from several families to look up sons of 
theirs, somewhere in this new western world. A 
number of them he succeeded in finding, young men, 
born and nurtured in the choicest of English homes, 
university men some of them, but wrecked both in 
fortune and character by their own wayward and 
reckless courses of life. 

Over against these he set the picture of a person 
in his own city of Wolverhampton, commonly 



166 AN OVERWORKED PROVERB, 

known as ''The Woman in White." Such was her 
purity of character, such her sweet and unselfish 
spirit, such her shining example in all that is good, 
that she walked the earth as one already robed in 
the white linen which is the righteousness of saints. 
And what was her heredity? She was born in 
the slums of that sootiest of ''Black Country" 
towns. With inheritance all begrimed and be- 
fouled like the place of her birth, by God's help 
she came up and out from the defilement of it to 
be the "Woman in White," as the water lily rises 
and opens its pure face to the sunlight from out 
the black ooze and muck of a stagnant pond. By 
committing her soul to him whose are all souls, 
she washed her robes and made them white. And 
so it may be with each of us, so far as there is evil 
in the inheritance which comes to us all. Any 
weak strain in our moral makeup is weakness in 
which the divine strength will make itself perfect, 
if we will but lay hold upon it. No stream of in- 
herited tendency can ever make wreck of our lives 
except as we ourselves consent to go with its drift. 
An appetite for drink, born in a man, makes a 
drunkard of him only when he himself does the 
drinking. Whatever sour grapes our fathers may 
have eaten, our teeth will never be very sorely on 
edge unless we fall to eating the sour grapes our- 
selves. The power of evil to work mischief upon 
us lies in our own consent and concurrence in evil 
doing. And it always works mischief for anyone 
to say that he cannot help doing the thing that is 



AN OVERWORKED PROVERB. 167 

wrong. With God's help at hand no man is help- 
less; and His help for us is laid upon one who is 
mighty. Whatever the stress of tendency and 
temptation upon us, it is for us to commit our souls 
unto him to whom all souls belong. Whatever 
our earthly antecedents, the eternal consequence of 
it is bound up in this, the best of heredity cannot 
be the making of us, unless we choose to live the 
life that is best. Nor can the worst of heredity 
be the undoing of us, if only we will give place to 
this as the supreme reality of our life ''as I live saith 
the Lord God: behold all souls are mine; as the soul 
of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine." 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 

And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar 
of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a 
pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and 
night.— Ex. 13 : 21. 

And he was transfigured before them. And his 
raiment became shining exceeding white as snow. And 
there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice 
came out of the cloud, saying. This is my beloved Son: 
hear him.— Ms^rk 9 : 2, 3 and 7. 

Wide distance, both in time and condition, lies 
between these two texts. One goes back to the 
primitive days when God's word to men was 
largely in fragment and symbol. The other is at 
the very fullness of time, when the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among men, with glory as of 
the only begotten of the Father. But there is one 
thing common to them both. In each God's 
manifesting of himself to men was partly in cloud 
and partly by the shining of light. In his leading 
of Israel from out the land of their bondage on to 
the land of their hope, God's presence, going be- 
fore them, was signified by daily interchange 
between the bright and the dark. At the trans- 
figuring of Jesus before His disciples, it was with 
face shining as the Sun, and raiment white as the 
light; it was also with a cloud overshadowing, and 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 169 

the voice saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear 
him," came to them, not from out the more excel- 
lent glory, but from out the cloud. 

The truth thus signalized is what we are now to 
observe and apply. God's revealing of himself to 
our human knowledge is at the same time a cer- 
tain hiding of himself. The divine leading of us 
here in this world is by means of mystery as well 
as of illumination. The Lord goes before us in a 
pillar that is cloud at times, as at times it is fire. 
Upon the very mountain heights of our spiritual 
vision, where it is most blessed for us to be, where 
God in Christ and our life as belonging to Him 
stand transfigured before us bright as the sun, 
there is the cloud overshadowing; and also, if we 
will but listen, the voice addressing us out of the 
cloud. 

The truth of this appears even on the surface. 
With all there is of divine revelation, God is as 
much a mystery to us as ever. Indeed the mys- 
tery of God seems to us so much the vaster and 
deeper the farther we see into the revealings which 
He makes of himself. Manifestation of God is not 
the clearing away from about Him of all that is 
clouded and strange. It is rather such showing of 
Him as makes us still more aware how largely he 
is concealed from our view. The more we know of 
God, especially as revealed in Jesus our Lord, the 
clearer it is in what surpassing degree He is still 
the Unknown. The larger our learning of Christ, 
as to the Father in heaven, as to his will for us 



170 THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 

and his ways with us, the wider to us is the range 
of mystery outlying and compassing about. It is 
like the view from some mountain top. The outer- 
most rim of vision is extended by it on every side. 
Along with that is the sharpened sense of what 
there must be beyond that outermost rim. All 
true knowledge of God makes us aware so much 
the more, how far, in himself and His ways with 
us, He outreaches our knowing. 

Not that this is peculiar to knowledge of God. 
From the days of Socrates until now it is the 
mark of a wise man to recognize the greatness of 
what he does not know. Our own age, with its 
vast increase of knowledge as to the natural world, 
has confirmed it anew. We enlarge upon the 
strides that science has made through the last 
hundred years, beyond the whole sum of all the 
centuries before. We pity people, even a few 
generations back, for their ignorance of much that 
is commonest knowledge with us. We smile at 
the mystery they made of things plain as day- 
light to us; our acquaintance with the universe 
we live in is so much fuller and truer than theirs. 
But is the universe any the less a mystery to us 
than to people of old? Nay, the mystery of it is 
deeper than ever, by as much as we know more 
about it. Many things once secrets of nature are 
the commonplace of to-day. What then? Is 
nature left without any secrets? Has it become 
so open a book that httle if anything strange or 
surprising lingers about it? Just the reverse, 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 171 

Never did the universe present to the mind of 
man such a range and depth of mystery as now. 
And that because never before was there such 
range or depth to what man knows of the universe. 
The multiplying of knowledge has been an ever 
greater multiplying of what is seen to be still the 
unknown. Every new discovery of science is the 
lighting of some dark place in nature. At the 
same time it makes visible other and vaster re- 
gions of darkness. Newton, watching the fall of an 
apple, threw much light on the force of gravitation. 
But in so doing, he carried the whole subject up 
into sublimer mystery than ever, having found a 
place for the falling apple alongside the stars in 
their courses. Frankhn, with his kite, cast some 
light on the very lightning of heaven; and dis- 
covery has gone on, till to-day we are on fairly 
familiar terms with that strange agent of nature. 
And yet the mystery of it, as it lights our dweUings 
and runs our errands, is deeper far than Franklin 
even imagined. A great flood of light has come 
in upon all things having life, from the researches 
of biology. But is there no more darkness there? 
Rather is it plainer than ever how immense and 
unfathomable is the mystery of life. Every trail 
in this field brings up, where? At some kind of 
cell, some sort of hiding place. Tear off the cov- 
ering and where is the life? Gone, undiscovered 
as ever. Such is our knowledge of nature, of the 
universe throughout. Discover as much as we 
can, unlock as many of its secrets as possible, and 



172 THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD, 

we are not rid of mystery, but face to face with 
new volumes and depths of it. The torch of learn- 
ing, as it leads men the way forward and upward, 
is a pillar of cloud as well as of fire. Science, in 
the transfiguring with which it makes the face of 
things shine as the sun, has its overshadowing 
cloud. 

Like our knowledge of the universe, in this 
regard, is our acquaintance with its Author, the 
God who is in it and over it all. His revealings 
of himself to us are at the same time a certain 
hiding of himself. His very shining into our 
hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of 
His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, is attended 
with clouds. To learn of Christ that God is our 
Father is as the shining of a great light about and 
before us, so many dark things and dark places 
are illumined by it. But it does not clear the sky 
for us from all darkness whatever. Certain clouds 
overshadow us all the thicker and heavier by rea- 
son of so great a light. There is the mystery of 
suffering, for one thing. If God be our Father, 
with such love for us as our Lord made known, 
is it not passing strange that his appointings for 
us should sometimes be so painful and saddening? 
If God were our enemy, then we could understand 
that it would please him to put us to grief. But 
with His infinitude of kindness and tenderness 
toward us, what in all the world is quite so hard 
to understand as our griefs and sorrows? The 
very love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, going 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 173 

before us, leading us the way, is a pillar both of 
cloud and fire. Along with its transfiguring light, 
in which so many things about and above us shine 
as the sun, it, too, has its overshadowing cloud. 
What was the real cloud into which those disciples 
of His entered on the mountain top? It was the 
decease which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem. 
That is what He spoke of there with Moses and 
Elijah, and from that time had much to say about 
to His disciples. It was His cross whose shadow 
hung as a cloud over the transfiguring glory. 
From out that mystery of all mysteries God speaks 
full-voiced to us, saying, ''This is my beloved Son; 
this man, wholly well-pleasing to me, is the Man 
of Sorrows. This is my love, that I give Him unto 
death for your life." To know the love of God 
in self-sacrifice equal to that, is it not to be more 
aware than ever of depths and heights and lengths 
and breadths to it, by which it passes our knowl- 
edge? There to behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, is it not, also, to 
behold how greatly He is a God that hideth him- 
self, whose ways are past finding out? 

And just here we are most apt to quarrel with 
divine revelation. It leaves us still so much in 
the dark, leaves so many things still undiscovered. 
If God wants us to know Him as our loving Father, 
why should He make so great a mystery of it at 
times? Why does He keep himself so much in 
hiding from us. If He would show us His glory, 
why put us in a cleft of the rock, cover us with 



174 THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 

His hand and make His goodness pass before us 
so that at best we can see only the back of it? 
Why not make His loving-kindness so manifest to 
us that it should be all light, without clouds or 
darkness at all? And sometimes we turn away 
from what light there is, because of the cloud that 
overshadows. We refuse what Christ makes mani- 
fest of God, because it is likewise so manifest that 
in much He is still beyond our knowing. 

But not thus do we quarrel with revealings and 
knowledge in other fields. The light of science 
upon the world we live in is very welcome to us; 
we gladly learn all we can about it, while such 
light and learning make us all the more aware what 
a world of mystery it is. We do not refuse light to 
walk by and work with because of what it leaves 
still in the dark. The electric lamp is highly con- 
venient, is greatly serviceable for us, while its very 
shining is largely problem and puzzle to us. The 
sunshine itself is a sevenfold mystery of color. 
For that matter, there are rays of darkness as well 
as of color in the sunshine. Some of them we call 
the X-rays, simply because so little is known 
about them. But for all that the sunlight is pleas- 
ant to see; is so good and helpful for every activity 
of life. The very X-rays and other dark parts of 
the sunshine we are finding to be of use. 

And shall it not be equally so with the light of 
God which shines for us in the face of Jesus Christ? 
Though clouds and darkness may be still about Him, 
is He not the light come into the world to lighten 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 175 

every man? Shall we not open our eyes to it, wel- 
come it to walk in and work by, much as it may 
leave still unrevealed? It is the Lord himself who 
goes before us, leading us the way, in the cloud as 
well as in the fire. The very mystery of God, as 
well as His illumination is ministry for us as we 
have life's journey to make. It is good for us to 
be with the Son of Man as His garments of our 
humanity glisten whiter than archangels' robes, 
for out of the very cloud which overshadows is 
the voice which speaks to us, the voice of our 
Father, saying: ''This is my Son, my well-beloved, 
well-pleasing to me, hear ye him." 

But, it will be asked, what help to us from the 
mystery of God, along with His revealings of him- 
self? Much help, and in more than one way. 
First of all it helps us to some due sense of the 
divine greatness. Were God's revealings of him- 
self such as to make no impression upon us of the 
unknown and inscrutable in Him, our idea of God 
would be neither very large nor very sublime. 
We should not reverence Him much. Nothing 
awakens in us so great respect for a thing as to 
find that the farther we study into it, the more 
of it there is still to be learned. It is so that our 
learning of God inspires us with reverence for Him. 
Because the utmost of His revealing leaves Him 
still so much in hiding, we get some proper sense of 
how great He is. If our knowledge of God and His 
ways did not stand out against such background 
of the dark and unknown we should not look up 



176 THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 

to Him, we should the rather look down upon Him. 
He would be to us no greater than ourselves, not 
so great, for who of us but is largely a mystery to 
himself! The Lord goes before us in the cloud, as 
well as the fire, to lead us the way, that He may 
bring us to some due sense of His greatness. 
Along with the more excellent glory of His trans- 
figured Son, He speaks to us oat of the overshadow- 
ing cloud, that we may recognize Him not only as 
our Father, but as Father of an infinite majesty. 

Again, the mystery of God, along with His di- 
vine revealings, helps us by quickening in us aspi- 
ration most intense and devout. What we think 
we know all about soon gets tiresome to us; its 
interest and zest for us are short-lived. Once let 
science satisfy us that she has laid open the last 
secret which the universe holds, and we would 
sicken of science and find the universe itself a 
tame and tedious affair. It is by the mysteries 
which nature keeps ever flaunting in our faces, that 
she invites and provokes us to study and work in 
her various fields. Were she to keep no secrets 
from us, how listless and shiftless she would very 
soon make us. In like manner, as one has said, 
'*If we could know God exhaustively and at once, 
the thought of Him would soon become a monoto- 
nous truism and a distasteful platitude. We should 
weary of God, if He were less than infinite in 
every aspect and direction. If God's revelation 
were without reserved questions in it, the very 
enchantment of it would be gone, the splendor 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. Ill 

vanish like a tropical sunset.'^ But not such is 
our God; nor such the manifesting that He makes 
of himself. There is ample reserve with Him, of 
truth and love, of goodness and knowledge of him- 
self to keep us ever aspiring, forever following on 
to know him as our Father. Crowning all is the 
unfading inheritance reserved for us as his children, 
the unending surprise of the life to come. For 
what would immortality be but weariness, world 
without end, were there not depths and freshness 
of infinite wisdom and goodness to be forever 
unfolding? 

Once more, the mystery attending divine reve- 
lation has ministry to it, in often safeguarding for us 
the pathway of life. When God's way for Israel 
lay through the sea, their pillar of cloud and fire, 
we are told, stood all night between them and their 
foes, so they came not near one another. How 
many a passage of life is made safe for us in much 
that way. There are perils besetting our path 
which never quite reach us, from the mercy of our 
God in not letting us know too much about them. 
I remember from my boyhood the burning of a 
barn in which were valuable horses. Attempt 
after attempt to get them out failed, for, dazzled 
by the fire, they would not stir. At length a man 
having better understanding of horses brought 
them all safely out, just by drawing their blankets 
over their heads, so they could not see at all, but 
were led by him. Somewhat thus, at times, is our 
Father's, our Saviour's rescuing of us from the 

12 



178 THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 

glare of our passions, from out the blaze of an 
alluring world. 

And then the path for gaining the sublimer 
levels of life we often would fail to travel at all 
did not the Lord go before us, leading us the way 
in the cloud as well as the fire. I once climbed 
the Riffel Alp, for what is perhaps the grandest 
Swiss mountain view to be reached by an average 
good walker, without apparatus or guide. The 
wildest part of the road I passed all alone in the 
midst of a dense enveloping cloud. It was like 
walking in some half -lighted crypt or tunnel. 
The rocks and tree trunks on either hand were 
walled in with mist, the tree tops overhead were 
like tracery in a vault of cloud. I could see little 
except a few rods of the pathway rising steep and 
rugged before me. Afterward, from above, when 
the cloud had lifted, I looked down and saw where 
lay the pathway by which I had come. In places 
it threaded the edge of a sheer precipice, which 
would have made my head swim had I known it 
was there. But the kindly cloud had hidden it 
from me, and the upward path, otherwise perhaps 
too fearful for me, was entirely safe. Is it not so 
that we are brought, sometimes, up to life's higher 
levels? Not only is it kindly light that leads us 
through the encircling gloom, but the encircling 
gloom itself is kindly. ''O'er moor and fen, o'er 
crag and torrent," we are led on, surely and safely, 
by the merciful hiding of much from our sight. 
At length, from above, the gloom gone, our looking 



THE LIGHT AND THE CLOUD. 179 

down upon the path by which we have come is to 
see how kindly was not only the light but also the 
cloud. It was so that the Lord went before Israel, 
leading them in the way. The loving-kindness of 
their God was in the cloud as well as in the fire. 
To those disciples of Jesus at his transfiguration, 
it was good to be there, good to be under the over- 
shadowing cloud, as well as to behold the more 
excellent glory; for out of the cloud the divine 
message came: ''This is my beloved Son, hear 
him.'' And there is the same divine message for 
us to be hearing. Along with the shining face and 
the glistening garments the very cloud gives us 
witness to our Father's good pleasure, to the 
loving-kindness of our God. 



AN ADDRESS AT THE VESPER 
SERVICE, CORNELL UNIVER- 
SITY, SUNDAY, DEC. 9, 1906.* 

The noblest achievement of which the sculptor's 
art is capable, we get our best idea of from master- 
pieces now marred and broken. A Venus of 
Melos with both arms missing, a fragment of 
Parthenon frieze, with its figures cracked and 
chipped, tell us more of the perfection to which 
work in stone can be carried than any piece of 
modern sculpture, fresh and flawless from the 
artist's hands. 

It is somewhat like this with our ideas of the 
finest and noblest possibilities in human life and 
character. We get our most vivid impressions of 
them, we get our profoundest conviction of their 
reality, not so much from lives that fill out a full 
round of years and have a certain earthly com- 
pleteness to them, as from lives that have been 
broken off in the midst of their years, lives cut 
short just as the highest promise of them was 

* On arrival at Cornell University, Dec. 7, 1906, for a Sun- 
day as university preacher, Mr. Brodie found the entire com- 
munity in deep grief. In the destruction, by fire, of the Chi 
Psi fraternity house, that morning, four students and three 
citizens had lost their hves. At Vesper service on the fol- 
lowing Sunday Mr. Brodie gave the above address. 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 181 

beginning to unfold, as rare powers of mind and 
soul were fairly entered upon their first develop- 
ment. Such fragments often give us our deepest 
and clearest insight into the utmost of which life 
is capable, the noblest that character can become. 

Indeed, it is just this fragmentary aspect of 
human life, even when coming nearest to earthly 
completeness, that is most strongly suggestive of 
the real greatness belonging to our humanity. 
No human life, however well rounded out, attains 
its completeness here in this world. No human 
character, however abundant its fruits, ever 
brings them all to their ripeness before it dis- 
appears from the earth. There are always some 
beginnings not yet fulfilled. And with by far the 
larger number of lives nobly lived, with by far the 
larger number of characters worthily formed, it is 
the beginnings, not the completions to be seen in 
them, that gives them their significance and worth. 
Every true life, every great character is, more 
than anything else, one chapter after another of 
large and excellent beginnings. No person's 
achievement in this world is much more than a 
good start at something which he has succeeded 
in making. 

Nowhere is the truth of this more clear than in 
the case of Him who is example and pattern for 
all other men. The life of Jesus we are accustomed 
to speak of as the one perfect human life; His 
character, the measure of the stature of manhood 
in all its fullness. And yet what life ever had more 



182 ADDRESS AT VESPER SERVICE, 

the appearance of being cut short in the midst of 
its days ! What other life, in which any such great 
and glorious beginnings were left before anything 
like fulfillment and finishing could be given to 
them! So strong was the feeling of this in the 
minds of His first disciples, that one evangelist 
calls his story of that life ''The beginning of the 
gospel of Jesus Christ," while another refers to 
his account of it as ''A treatise of all that Jesus 
began both to do and to teach." It is in the 
things of which he made such perfect beginnings 
that we find the perfection of Jesus, Son of Man, 
upon the earth. 

And so it is of every other human life which is 
at all after the example and quality of his. So it 
is of every life having real significance and worth. 
Its life story, be it longer or shorter as a matter of 
years, is largely the story of beginnings well made. 
Its biography is largely made up of things well 
started upon, but still far short of anything like 
completion. Take this as a key in the reading of 
biography, and see how it helps to unlock the 
meaning of lives lived on a scale large enough to 
be put on record and to command the interest of 
after generations. It is true of a life like Glad- 
stone's, covering more than fourscore years, the 
long chain of whose eventful career is just one 
link after another of fresh beginnings, and at the 
end a broken link. With a life like Lincoln's, sud- 
denly cut off just when its highest usefulness 
seemed opening to it, this stands out the most 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 183 

impressive thing about it. And there are still 
shorter lives, full of rich promise, but early coming 
to their earthly end, of whom it can simply be 
said, they have just begun to live. But really, 
that is what all true and worthy life is, in this 
world — just beginning to live. It is there that the 
meaning and value of our human life is to be read. 
What good beginnings are there in it? If we ask 
as to its achievements, these, too, are but things 
at which it has well begun. 

Such is the fact of our life brought home to us 
with great keenness and force, when suddenly 
young lives full of promise are snatched from us 
by swift disaster or disease. Such death seems so 
untimely! The sadness of it is doubly sad! Such 
high hopes shattered! Such goodly beginnings 
faUing short of anything like their fitting fulfill- 
ment! But saddening a fact as it is, there is some- 
thing besides sadness to it. It is, at the same time, 
one of the surest of all grounds we have for most 
cherished and inspiring hope. Just because our 
human life at its best is so largely a matter of 
uncompleted beginnings, there is basis of soundest 
reason that we believe in immortality and the 
eternal life. Such faith and hope spring not sim- 
ply out of fancy and desire. Here is something in 
the nature of fact, something witji reality to it for 
them to rest upon. In every true human life, be 
it longer or shorter, there are beginnings, of such 
a kind and on such a scale that this world does 
not give scope for their completion. Human 



184 ADDRESS AT VESPER SERVICE, 

character with worth to it is a building whose 
design and material both require another world 
for its fulfilling and finishing. Would it be rea- 
sonable to conclude that such glorious beginnings 
are left forever fragmentary and incomplete? Can 
we easily believe that such fair blossoming, in its 
season here upon the earth, has nowhere in all the 
universe of God any season or climate in which 
to reach the fullness of its fruiting and ripening? 
Can it be that the one thing of infinite worth in 
this world of ours, the human spirit with the 
capabilities of life and character that are in it, is 
to stop short, with at most a good beginning and 
never find fulfillment commensurate with its powers? 
Then is it out of keeping with all else in the uni- 
verse of God. Truer by far, more reasonable and 
easier to believe, is that memorable line cut in 
stone beside your Cornell Library portal, ''God 
finishes the work by noble souls begun," and 
finishes not only the work which they left incom- 
plete, but finishes the lives themselves still in- 
complete upon laying down their work. Every 
noble life begun upon the earth is itself the begin- 
ning of a work too precious in the sight of God, 
too eternal in the scope and quality of it, to be 
left simply at that. The force of this truth, it 
would seem, came in upon the minds of the first 
Christian disciples to confirm them in their faith 
that Jesus was alive again after his suffering unto 
death. At any rate one of them said, speaking of 
his death, 'It was not possible that he should be 



COttNELL UNIVERSITY. 1§5 

holden of it." In view of what he had known 
Jesus to be, in his holy hfe and character as Son 
of Man; in view of all he had witnessed of what 
Jesus began both to do and teach, to him it was 
not difficult to believe that He was alive again. 
The difficult thing, the well-nigh impossible thing, 
would have been belief that such beginnings could 
be stopped short of anything like fulfillment by 
the tragedy of his cross. The miracle was not the 
resurrection of Jesus. Had the life that Jesus 
began to live through three and thirty years, and 
the things he therein began to do and teach, all 
ceased with the breath and pulse-beats of his 
crucified body, that would have been the miracle, 
most staggering both to reason and to faith. It 
was not possible that he should be holden of it. 
Here is our solidest ground of assurance in him as 
the ever-hving Lord. The life he lived upon earth, 
the manner of man he was and work he did are 
beginnings requiring such fulfillment. And it is 
the like sure ground we have for our hope of im- 
mortality and the eternal life. Other grounds 
there may be that lend it reinforcement and sup- 
port. But the strength of our faith and hope is 
here. Those human lives cut short while all is 
still promise with them, those other lives, which 
with the utmost of earthly attainment are still 
little more than incomplete beginnings, call for 
fulfillment corresponding to their qualities and 
powers. 

What meaning is there to life in a great univer- 



186 ADDRESS AT VESPER SERVICE, 

sity unless there be the greater world of life beyond 
into which its graduates are to go forth for the 
fulfillment of its beginnings? What meaning to be 
made out of the maze of a university curriculum 
were there no life for the students of it after the 
day of graduation? Much so is it with the cur- 
riculum in this university of our earthly life. It 
is at best a life of beginnings for fulfillment and 
completion in the world that is to come. And 
when all is said, what better could it be than that? 
Sad as it is to witness the cutting short of brightest 
earthly promise, it is at the same time witness 
giving ground for the surest hope. The cutting 
short may be but the short cut to speediest and 
largest completion of noblest beginnings. Here at 
any rate is good comfort to take amid the sadden- 
ing shadows which have fallen so lately on this 
university and city. The flower of young student 
manhood, and the flower of heroic citizenship 
come to its rescue, fallen together! These young 
men were well known to you. What brightness 
of promise was in them, what goodly beginnings 
of noble life they had made, you can bear witness. 
To miss them out of your own lives is distress and 
loss. But there is this as well to be gained: their 
promise cut short, their beginnings of life left in- 
complete are new entries in the volume of witness 
that life well begun here in this world will surely 
come to its fulfillment in a world with room enough 
to realize fairest promises and most abounding 
hopes. So do they add meaning and richness for 



CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 187 

us all to the words already quoted, words already 
monumental on the Cornell campus, and made 
still more monumental by their early death, 
words which may well serve to sum up and seal 
the impressions of this hour: 

"God finishes the work by noble souls begun/' 



NOV 11 1912 



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